MICHIGAN
(1) In the State of Michigan, there is a filing deadline of May 31 of the tax year involved for tax appeals involving commercial real property, industrial real property, developmental real property, commercial personal property, industrial personal property or utility personal property. A protest of the assessment for these classifications of property to the local Board of Review is optional except for personal property, which requires that the personal property statement be filed prior to the start of the Board of Review to excuse the protest requirement;
and
(2) There is a filing deadline of July 31 of the tax year involved for tax appeals involving agricultural real property, residential real property, timber-cutover real property, or agricultural personal property. We really only care about the RESIDENTIAL REAL PROPERTY (That’s your house is real simple terms)
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE WEBSITE AND WHY IT IS IN BOLD
Although the deadline in Michigan for filing a property tax appeal is July 31, for residential property, you must appeal to the local board of review first. We can do this for your or you can do it, it just has to be done. Once we get rolling, we’ll figure the best strategy for this.
You will get a notice of assessment in the mail sometime in late February. This is it, this tells you what your new Taxable and Assessed Value is based upon and how your Michigan property taxes are calculated. They give you 10 days to file this appeal with the local board of review. Yes, 10 days, not 21, not 33 or even 11, but 10 (remember Lindsay Hunter when he was playing for the Detroit Pistons, he was number 10)
The local Board of Review is most likely going to reject the appeal or make a very slight adjustment. This is where the fun starts and most people who don’t know what they are doing stop. We don’t stop. We don’t stop because before we went to the Board of Review we believed we had a good reason, a good reason to lower your property taxes. At this time we will prepare our pleading to submit to the State Tribunal. Now we wait. And then we wait a bit more. And then wait a little more. After a few (6-8 months but we say a few anyway) we will talk to the person in charge of the file locally. This could be assessor or a law firm representing the jurisdiction. If we can’t settle there, we wait and let the process run it course. If it goes on beyond a year (which it will) we will file an amendment to cover each subsequent year so we will recoup all savings. You don’t have any risk and don’t pay anything but the guaranteed filing fee.
This is not rocket science, but you have to know how the process works, the timing and the intricacies to be successful at appealing property taxes in Michigan.