Minneapolis property taxes rising only slightly

If you own a median value home in Minneapolis -- one worth a little over $180,000 -- it looks like your property tax is going up next year but only about 1 percent. That's a tax increase of $34.

Owners of lower-value homes could actually see taxes fall a few bucks. People with higher value homes will see increases in the 4 or 5 percent range. If you're keeping track, that's better news than St. Paul residents will be getting.

You won't get a bill until next spring, but it's tax season now for the local officials who have to figure out how a new state law, preliminary budget decisions and changes in property values come together. They're charged with sending "truth-in-taxation" estimates to all property owners next month, so we asked a number of county officials around Minnesota to give us a look at how those numbers are shaping up.

I posted something earlier on St. Paul, so I wanted to get Minneapolis numbers out as soon as they arrived. Here's what Ken Rowe at Hennepin County provided:

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Minneapolis taxes by the numbers

You can see, for example, that a home worth $300,000 a year ago is now worth an estimated $291,900 and will be taxed under the new state exclusion as though it were worth $280,931. It's tax is projected to be $5,107, an increase of 3.8 percent.

I'm repeating myself here, but the reason some taxes are going up more than others within Minneapolis is mostly because the state changed the way it's giving a break to some owners of homes worth less than $413,800.

On the other hand, the reason Minneapolis taxes as a whole are going up less than St. Paul's (and a lot of other places around Minnesota) is that Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis are levying a total tax take next year about the same as they did this year. The Minneapolis School District is up by nearly 10 percent, pushing overall taxes up somewhat for city residents.

Again, use caution taking these numbers to the bank. These are preliminary citywide numbers and an individual's results can vary. They are based on the assumption that the assessed value of your home dropped about 3 percent in the past year. That's the amount a median home declined in value.

We're going to track this issue closely in coming months as a project we're calling "Forced to Choose." Reporter Tom Robertson produced a report from Bemidji for All Things Considered Thursday and I put up a companion blog post on the increases headed toward owners of business property.