Allegan County has published a detailed pamphlet entitled "Understanding Proposal A in a Declining Market". To download a PDF of this information, click here.
The State Treasury has issued the inflation rate used to calculate your 2012 Taxable Value.Your Taxable Value—not including any new construction—will increase by 2.7%. Remember that taxes are based on Taxable Value, not the State Equalized Value (SEV). In some areas of the township we have dropped the SEV down lower that the current taxable value and in that case the SEV will become the new Taxable value.
Your SEV is based on sales that occurred between 10/01/2010 and 9/30/2011 in your area. The sale prices of the sold homes are compared with the assessed value and a ratio is developed to bring the assessed value in line with the sale prices. This ratio is then applied to all homes in a particular area. Since we are comparing past sales, our estimates are usually low. Overall, data indicates that residential property will stay about the same this year with some areas still declining but some actually rising a bit in value.
The Principal Residence Exemption will reduce your property taxes by about 40%. Please be sure that if you qualify for this exemption (your home is your principal residence) that you are receiving the exemption. We find a few people every year that qualify, but who are not taking advantage of this tax break. The Principal Residence Exemption form is available on our forms page. Also, please be aware that if you have moved from your principal residence and it is on the market, you can continue to get the PRE Exemption for up to three years by filing a Conditional Rescind form. You need to file this form each year you wish to claim the exemption.
The "Homestead Property Tax Exemption" is now known as the "Homeowner's Principal Residence Exemption." For this form click here.
For more information and tax forms, follow the links provided:
http://www.allegancounty.org/Government/EQ/PRDsearch.asp?pt=Living (for Allegan County parcel map and parcel data)
http://www.michigan.gov/treasury (for forms)
http://www.michigan.gov/taxes/0,1607,7-238-43535---,00.html