Those of you who successfully grieved your property taxes

For those of you who successfully grieved your property taxes, did you actually get any money back? Or did it just come off next years taxes? And, if you used a company, did you have to pay it before you got the money? Also, what company did you use? Comtemplating grieving my taxes with a company (we have tried on our own in the past and it did not work)

Re: Those of you who successfully grieved your property taxes

Because the process takes so long, you will very rarely hear of people who get only a credit on a future tax bill.. Most of the times it's a refund.

Lawers and tax grievance companies work on a contingency fee basis. In other words, if they don't win, you don't pay. However, the authorization and retainer you sign with them provides for the taxing authority to issue the refund directly to them. The attorney or grievance company will deposit your check into their account, take their fees and any disbursements and send you the net amount. Be careful, because you CAN end up owing more money than you actually "got back" from the taxing authority.

Re: Those of you who successfully grieved your property taxes

We grieved using mark lewis. It took over a year but we won. I don't remember the amount of our reduction. But we were issued a bill from ML right after we won for his fee. Which was 50% of our deduction. According to his info we should recieve a check from the town for the value of the reduction BC we filed to grieve 2009 taxes but paid those and didn't receive the reduction until 2010. Anyway we have still not rec'd anything!

They were quick to send us an adjusted tax bill however it was after our bank had adjusted our amount for the year so we truely didn't see the lower rate in our pmts for another year. But at the beginning of 2011 we did receive a check from our escrow acct because of the over PMT.

Hope this makes sense!