Property tax review is free, so why pay for it?

If you’re a homeowner, you may have received an official-looking letter recently informing you that your property needs to be reassessed for tax purposes. The cost of the reassessment is $179, but you’ll have to pay an additional $30 if you don’t mail in your application within the next few weeks. ‘It’s a scam,’ Los Angeles County Assessor Rick Auerbach told me. ‘They’re trying to make you think the letter comes from my office so you’ll pay them to do something you could do yourself for free.’The letter is actually from a company called Property Tax Reassessment, which gives a Los Angeles post office box as its address. Auerbach said the company’s letters have prompted a raft of complaints from homeowners to his office and to other assessors statewide.’This outfit is particularly disturbing because they seem to be sending their notices to everyone,’ said Larry Stone, Santa Clara County’s assessor in Northern California. ‘The letters are terribly deceiving.’