Not often does it pay to be a farmer, but that designation may have saved some Wasatch County residents from paying too much on their 2022 property taxes due to an assessment error.
The Wasatch County Council corrected some of these assessments Wednesday night for three parcels southeast of Wallsburg. Under the state’s Greenbelt Act, the owner of the land isn’t required to pay taxes based on the market rate of the land, but rather the potential production value. If they were to sell or repurpose the land, however, they would be liable for the difference between the taxes they paid and the taxes that would have been due based on the county’s market value assessments.
This potential amount will be lower than it would have been had the incorrect 2022 values not been corrected on Wednesday.
“In all these cases, it was something that we identified through the rollback process that there was an error and came to you,” County Manager Dustin Grabau said.
In 2022, three parcels owned by the same man were assessed at incorrect values. In 2023, this error was corrected.
“The 2022 taxes were incorrect,” Grabau said. “There are a number of greenbelt properties who are subject to this error. But if they don’t change their use in the next five years, it won’t be an issue.”
If the properties remain farmland, the error won’t be a problem.
Griffin said that properties in the area were determined to be $10,000 an acre based on what the county knew at the time of assessment. Not happy with that amount, some property owners appealed their values to the county Board of Equalization. They showed sales that Griffin said the county had not known about.
“They were lowered at BOE for those who appealed because some people do pay attention,” Griffin said. “Those people actually got a lowering to $2,300 an acre. But if you didn’t appeal, you didn’t get changed. … You have to appeal to get a change,” Griffin said.
Grabau explained to The Park Record that each of the properties subject to the erroneous overassessment are greenbelt properties, so if all of the farmers keep farming they won’t have any issues and the mistake won’t have any real effects in the future. If the land is switched to a different use, however, the owners will be subject to the rollback taxes and county officials could once again be looking at the same error.
If the state required land sales and prices to be disclosed to the government — as is the norm in 38 states — Griffin said accurate assessments would be more easily attainable. His office could have been aware of several sales that would have caused them to assess the properties in question at $2,300 per acre rather than $10,000.
“Full disclosure state would give us so much help,” Griffin said. “It’s not reality and probably will never be.”
The error is one among many Griffin’s office has been accused of making by county residents over the past few months.
With the Wasatch County Republican Party’s Primary Election only weeks away, he faces a challenger who’s quick to point out the difficulties of testing inaccurate assessments, and he’s in the midst of a lawsuit filed by residents of Wasatch County who claim his office has not correctly adjusted the values of each property within its jurisdiction as state code mandates it to annually.