Hennepin and Ramsey tax notices are in the mail
Next year's property tax notices are hitting the mail this week, so we can stop guessing about what they're going to say, at least in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.
Hennepin County notices went out Tuesday afternoon, and for 57 percent of residential property owners, there's an increase over this year's bills, according to Ken Rowe in the tax and property office. A huge majority of those increases will be in the single digits.
More than four out of 10 homeowners will actually see a decrease when they open their notices. That's about typical for recent years, Rowe said. As predicted, the bigger increases are falling on higher value homes. Consider that in Minneapolis almost a quarter of homeowners will see an increase of between 5 and 10 percent. In Wayzata, that's true for more than half of homeowners.
The news in Ramsey County isn't quite as good. While three out of 10 homeowners will see a decrease when the notices go out on Friday, half the county's residential taxpayers will see a single-digit increase and another 19 percent will see taxes going up between 10 and 20 percent.
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A few will actually see a tax increase of more than 20 percent, Ramsey County's Chris Samuel said. Mostly those are people getting a double whammy -- rising property values during a time when most have fallen and the impact of a shift in tax burden resulting from a change in state law.
Samuel said the numbers are just about what people predicted -- better news for low value homes, worse news for high value homes, apartment building owners and commercial property. The big factor there, of course, is the elimination of the homestead credit for homesteaded homeowners and its replacement with an exclusion that is shifting the tax burden significantly in some places.
That shift is expected to be more pronounced in smaller communities outstate.
For a sampling of early numbers around the state, check out our graphic showing how median value homes are getting hit in a couple dozen cities. Most are going up.
Remember that these numbers are based on preliminary levy proposals approved by city, school and county officials. Those levies can be reduced between now and the end of the year. They cannot be raised.