Publisher's summary
We reviewed 58 out of 765 (8 percent) agricultural, veterans and senior citizen exemptions, totaling $2.9 million, on properties with a total assessed value of $7.7 million. We found that 20 exemptions (34 percent), totaling $1.4 million, were not properly supported by adequate documentation to establish and/or maintain exemption eligibility. We reviewed 21 agricultural exemptions totaling $1.36 million on properties with assessed values of $3.6 million. Fourteen exemptions valued at $927,000 lacked one or more pieces of supporting documentation to verify eligibility. We also reviewed 22 veteran exemptions totaling $921,000 on properties with assessed values of approximately $2.5 million. Six exemptions totaling $480,000 lacked the required supporting documentation. Finally, we reviewed 15 senior citizen exemptions totaling $600,000 on properties with assessed values of $1.6 million and found that they were generally properly supported.
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Appendix D: Audit Methodology and Standards
We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution
and the State Comptroller’s authority as set forth in Article 3 of the New York
State General Municipal Law. To achieve the audit objective and obtain valid audit
evidence, our audit procedures included the following:
ll We reviewed Board minutes and applicable State and local legislation to
gain an understanding of our audit scope.
ll We inquired with the Assessors and Town officials about the exemption
process and recordkeeping requirements.
ll We obtained the 2017 Town tax roll (roll) and compared it with the exemption
report from the Real Property System (System), administered by the
New York State Office of Real Property Tax Services and updated by the
local Assessors, to determine whether the population of exemptions and
corresponding dollar values were the same. The exemption population was
the same on both the roll and the System report in total and for the sample
exemptions that we traced. As a result, we determined the roll data was
reliable to use for our audit sample selection.
ll We reviewed the 2017 tax roll to determine the total number and
corresponding dollar amount of agricultural, veteran and senior citizen
exemptions, as it was the most recently completed tax roll during our audit
period. The roll reported over 960 agricultural, veteran and senior citizen
exemptions valued at more than $18 million on properties with a total
assessed value of $74 million. We reduced this total population by 195
exemptions that totaled $1.2 million, on properties with assessed values
totaling $20 million, because each exemption was valued at $10,000 or
less and had a minimal impact on the overall tax levy. From this remaining
population totaling $16.8 million in exemptions, we judgmentally selected
58 exemptions valued at $2.9 million (17 percent of the audit population’s
exemption dollar value) on properties with a total assessed value of $7.7
million for our audit testing. We focused our sample selection on the
58 higher dollar value exemptions as these have a greater financial tax
impact on the remaining taxpayers within the Town. In some cases, certain
properties were under more than one exemption category.
ll We reviewed any available documentation relating to the exemptions and
then recalculated the exemption amounts to verify that the property owners
received the appropriate exemption amount.
We conducted this performance audit in accordance with GAGAS (generally
accepted government auditing standards). Those standards require that we
plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a
reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objective.
We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our
findings and conclusions based on our audit objective.
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