Personal Property Assessment
• Assessment is the process of assigning value to property for the purpose of property taxation. In the case of personal property most people think of this in terms of automobiles and other licensed vehicles. However, personal property is more than cars and trucks. Personal property also includes things like livestock, income furniture, grain crop, farm machinery, business equipment, manufactured homes, and planes, to list a few.
• The assessed value of personal property depends on the type of and use of the property and is arrived at by applying the correct assessment percentage to the value of the property. For instance a vehicle with historic plates would be assessed at 5% of its value. Farm equipment and livestock would be assessed at 12%. Other property like cars, trucks, trailers, recreational vehicles and equipment, heavy equipment and business equipment, just to mention a few, would be assessed at 33-1/3%. For example if the trade-in value for a particular vehicle year-make-model was $3,000, the assessed value would be calculated by multiplying $3,000 by 33-1/3%. Rounding the answer to the nearest ten would yield an assessed value of $1,000. Taxes are calculated by applying the combined levies of the taxing entities to the assessed value. For example, in 2003, a personal property account in the Rolla School District outside city limits with an assessed value of $1,000, where a combined tax levy of $4.2510 per hundred dollars of assessed value was levied, the total tax bill was $42.51: $1,000 divided by 100 times $4.2510 equals $42.51.
• In Missouri, it is the taxpayer's responsibility to file their personal property declaration in the county where they lived on January 1 and to list what they owned as of January 1. In January, the assessor mails assessment forms to those who are on the rolls at that time. It is the responsibility of people moving into the county who have eligible personal property to notify the assessor's office they are here so they can be added to the assessment rolls for the year they first live here January 1. It is important to have filed a form by March 1, since penalties for late assessment may be applied to the account.
• The assessment process was computerized by former assessor, Jack Harris. Each year in January, assessment forms are computer generated and mailed to all the accounts on file at that time. Each form has a barcode on it that helps us to speedily process the forms as they are returned. Scanning the barcode tells the computer we have received a response from the property owner and then we are able to alphabetize and file the forms so they can be retrieved easily and quickly. Since the property that was owned the prior year is still listed on the computer we can tell at a glance if there are any changes. After all the updates are made and the vehicle value tables have been updated, we then run a program that assigns values to all the vehicles and adds up the other valuation components to determine the final assessed value for each account. Assessment lists and tax books are all computer generated.