Until this week, the county had only partially applied a 1995 state law that reduces school taxes for owner-occupied homes. Officials will now recalculate tax bills for those residents, who pay taxes based on 4 percent of their home's value. The law exempts up to $100,000 of an owner-occupied home's value from school operating taxes.
Officials discovered the mistake this week, long after property values and expected taxes had been posted on the county's Internet site, www.bcgov.net/assessor. Bills were scheduled to be mailed Oct. 19, but that will now be delayed until Oct. 28 or 29. County administrator Gary Kubic said tax bills would be posted on the Web site starting Monday.
"In the editing or review or quality assurance of the calculations we did, it was determined through the Auditor's Office that the application of South Carolina statute ... was not applied properly or fully," Kubic said. "To compensate for the printing of the bills being delayed, everything will be back up and running and the bills will be online (Monday). We'll make sure there's disclosure prior to the election."
The recalculation means that people who live in their own home as their primary residence will save up to $90 on their tax bill if the home is worth at least $100,000, county controller Tom Henrikson said.
County officials originally calculated exemptions based on last year's tax rate, Henrikson said. But a review of the law showed that the amount of the exemption must be revised when there is a countywide reassessment.
The law requires the state to reimburse local schools for most of the lost tax revenue.
Taxpayers also may be confused by revisions in appraised values of some residential and commercial properties. County Assessor Bernice Wright said her office has changed the appraisals of about 2,500 residential and commercial properties and may keep doing so until property owners pay their bills.
Landowners have been receiving notification of their official property values since August, with the last batch of assessment notices being mailed out Oct. 4. Wright said Wednesday that while most commercial properties had been appraised by then, some property owners received an inaccurate notice of their property's value.
Appraisers finished all the work by Oct. 9, she said, and revised notices were mailed Tuesday.
But landowners may continue receiving changes to their property appraisals for months. County appraisers are reviewing their work as a result of about 4,600 appeals filed by landowners who think their assessments are wrong. As they double-check their work, appraisers also will examine the values of neighboring properties to make sure an entire neighborhood is correct, she said.
That means even if a landowner doesn't appeal his or her appraisal, the property's appraised value and taxes still could increase or decrease -- until the property owner pays the taxes.
"As people appeal their property value, and the appraisers start looking around, if they find errors while they are looking, they have the right to send the people a correction. We can do this as long as the taxpayer has not paid their tax bill yet," Wright said. "This will go on until taxpayers receive a tax bill and pay their tax bill."