Long Island Tax Grievance Process
Contrary to popular belief, the process of real estate tax reduction is not lengthy. In fact, with the right Tax Grievance firm, your grievance will be settled successfully and quickly. The Heller & Clausen Grievance Group is the Long Island Tax Grievance agency that you need to file your case and reduce your taxes without any hassle.
To get started, visit our website grieveourtaxes.com and complete the simple Nassau Tax Grievance or Suffolk Tax Grievance application form to sign up with us. Please note that we do not charge you anything until the case is won and your taxes are reduced. In the case we cannot get you the reduction, you will not pay us anything. We will pay the filing fee, appraisal cost and other costs.
Upon receiving authorization, we thoroughly analyze your property to determine whether or not you can receive tax reductions. If we determine your property can not receive any reductions, we will inform you of that at that time and will not continue to file a tax reduction claim. If we find that your property has been over assessed, we will immediately do an appraisal and file a complaint with the office of the assessor. The assessor’s office gives property owners a few weeks window to file their tax reduction grievances, the last day of the period is known as the grievance day. To ensure that your grievance meets the deadline, we at The Heller & Clausen Grievance Group make all the prior arrangements for you.
We present your grievance to the Board of Assessment Review which is composed of homeowners in your local town. After reviewing your grievance, the board decides whether your tax reduction is warranted and publishes their decision within a period of 6 weeks. At this point, they determine whether your property will get a reduction.
Our staff analysts will then discuss whether the reduction is satisfactory or not. If not, we file a SCAR (Small Claims Assessment Review). This is a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court. The assessor will then contact us and make an offer based on what the property value is. If we find that the offer is reasonable, we accept it and write a Stipulation of Settlement. We will then sign a settlement with the assessor and file it in the county court house.
If still we are not satisfied by what the assessor has offered, we go to trial and leave it up to judge to decide what the property is worth. When the judge makes a decision, we send you a copy of the decision and the bill. In some cases, the court case can take a period of up to one and a half years.
Upon a successful tax reduction grievance, your assessment will stay reduced for many years unless you make major improvements in your house or there is a town wide re-assessment on all the properties. The Heller and Clausen Grievance Group only charges 50% of first year’s savings only if we succeed and your taxes get reduced.
If you have any further questions call us at 631-782-3177.
