Property Assessment and Tax Process

According to the Local Government Center and UW-Extension office:

Administration of the property tax takes place locally, subject to detailed statutory control established by the Legislature. The elements are simple: identify all property through real property listing and personal property assessing, establish the value of the property through assessment, apply the tax rates (determined by the amount of taxes levied by the taxing jurisdictions in which the property lies) to the assessed value, compute the total taxes due plus special assessments and charges after applying all state credits, send tax bills to the property owners, and collect the payments of taxes. After taxes have been collected, proper amounts are distributed to the taxing jurisdictions (school, sewerage, sanitary, TCDB, and lake management districts; the county; the State of Wisconsin, for its forestry tax; and the municipality where the property is located).

Therefore, the process goes like this:

1. Identify and Assess the value of all property within the taxing jurisdiction.

This is where the government assesses what your property is worth. It is important that you get involved at this step by understanding how your property should be assessed and then ensuring that it is indeed assessed properly. See the "2012 Guide for Property Owners" and the "Agricultural Assessment Guide For Wisconsin Property Owners 2012" for guidance on determining how your property should be assessed. Then, you can review your tax bill at the St. Croix County Land Information Online to see how your property is actually being assessed.

If you notice that your property is not being assessed properly, you can go to the annual Open Book & Board of Review held at the Town Hall, usually in May or June of each year.You can discuss your assessment with the town's assessor and see if you can't get your assessment value adjusted to the proper amount. If you're unsuccessful there, you can try the Property Assessment Appeal Guide and appeal your assessment to a higher authority.

2.  Apply the tax rates

This is used to determine each person's share of the tax burden. Your property lies in several tax jurisdictions.You're part of the Wisconsin State jurisdiction, St. Croix County jurisdiction, Town of Cady jurisdiction, and either Spring Valley or Baldwin/Woodville School District jurisdiction. Each of these tax jurisdictions have levied a tax against your property and this is called the Equalized Value of all taxable real and personal property.

Your involvement at this point is to make sure that you're aware of any referenda that are on ballots at either fall or spring elections. Spring elections are a popular place to put school levy referenda that impact your property taxes. Remember the St. Croix County nursing home referendum?

You must also carefully consider the representatives that we elect to the county board, state senate and state assembly. They will vote on how your property taxes are to be spent at the state and county level.

Also, being a resident of a town in the state of Wisconsin, you can participate in the annual meeting to adopt the tax levy for your town each year. This meeting is going to be held on November 5, 2012 at 8:00PM at the Cady Town Hall. This is a unique privilege enjoyed by towns in Wisconsin that residents of cities and villages do not have. 

3. Compute total taxes due

Now your "tax rate" and the various "levies" come together to put a dollar value on your share of the overall tax burdens for all of the jurisdictions that you are in. This is the number that shows up on your annual tax bill.

4.  Collect taxes and distribute to taxing jurisdictions

Your town treasurer is responsible for this portion of the process.

Additional information can be found at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, Property Tax Common Questions web page.