SPOKANE, Wash. — On your Spokane County 2019 property tax bill, you're going to see a dramatic drop in the tax rate.
Most Spokane county residents will also see an increase in their assessed property value.
There are a few reasons for this.
With tax rates, the decrease is a result of two main factors. The decrease in the state school levy and the cap on school district maintenance and operations levies, which are now called enrichment levies.
The McCleary Decision in 2012 declared that Washington state was not allocating enough funding for education. To fix this, the state legislature created a new statewide education levy.
Turns out, the levy brought in more money than expected because Washington's property values right now are so high.
In 2019, the state reduced the school levy tax by about 30 cents per $1,000 of property value.
The state also put a $1.50 cap on maintenance and operation levies. For most school districts this meant, at most, a $3.50 decrease from previous rates.
This year, Spokane county voters also approved local levies for Spokane Public Schools and Spokane Valley Fire maintenance and operations.
Even though these taxes were approved, they weren't enough to overcome the drop in the state school tax. That's why the average property tax rate went down significantly from $13.56 in 2018 to $11.63 in 2019 (per $1,000 assessed value).
For those seeing a hike in their assessed property value, the assessor's office said it's all because of the current high demand for Spokane real estate.
But overall, the treasurer's office said this year, 83 percent of county taxpayers will be paying less this year compared to last year.
Spokane County property taxes are based on the assessed value of the previous year, to search for your information click here.