Property Tax Assessment: Eye in the Sky or Head in the Sand?

The all-important first step towards an equitable property tax is figuring out how much each home and business is actually worth. To do this perfectly, a tax assessor would need to visually inspect the inside and outside of every home — which, of course, no one actually does. But as a recent New York Times article notes, governments from Philadelphia to Florida are now relying on computerized aerial images (taken from a small plane) to detect changes in the outside appearance of homes and businesses. A Philadelphia tax administrator notes that the computerized system, which costs the city about $100,000 a year, "probably paid for itself within about two weeks." Assessment by low-flying planes may seem intrusive, but at the end of the day this is how the property tax is supposed to work. This approach is in stark contrast to the head-in-the-sand approach to property tax administration proposed by Alabama Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lucy Baxley, who has proposed ending the annual reassessment of Alabama homes.