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Real Property Tax Exemptions Why Should Exemptions Be Properly Supported? Assessors annually determine real property assessed values for the tax roll, which is the basis for real property tax bills issued in the following year and provides for equitable tax apportionment among property owners. While exemptions reduce a property owner’s tax liability, they shift a greater tax burden to the remaining non-exempt property owners. Assessors grant exemptions authorized by State and local laws, such as agriculture, veteran and senior citizen exemptions. Assessors are required to grant exemptions only after valid applications with proper supporting documentation are submitted to them by, or on behalf of, property owners. Assessors should retain these documents to demonstrate that a property was, and remains, eligible for an exemption, and periodically review and monitor the exemptions to ensure property owners and properties continue to meet exemption eligibility requirements.1 Certain exemptions (agricultural, veteran and senior citizen) require annual, or periodic, updated documentation to maintain eligibility, while within certain circumstances other exemptions (i.e., agricultural) may be granted for longer periods of time, spanning several years. Exemptions Were Not Properly Supported We reviewed 58 out of 765 (8 percent) agricultural, veteran and senior citizen exemptions, totaling $2.9 million, on properties with a total assessed value of $7.7 million.2 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. Agricultural – 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, as follows: ll Eleven agricultural exemptions totaling $427,000 were farmland district exemptions which require soil survey forms to be properly supported. However, these forms were not found for six exemptions totaling $236,000. While the Assessors agreed that some supporting documentation should be retained for the life of the exemption, they could not locate these forms and said they may have been misplaced or disposed of them. Additionally, two of these exemptions totaling $44,400 did not have any proof of income on file, and as such, were not properly supported. 1 See Appendix A for eligibility requirements for the agricultural, veteran and senior citizen exemptions. 2 For our test sample, we reduced the total population of 960 exemptions to 765 by eliminating exemptions of lesser value that have a minimal effect on the tax levy. See Appendix D for detail on the sampling methodology. 2 Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller