How the Wasatch County, Utah Assessor’s Office used technology to identify tax revenue

Overview

The Wasatch County, Utah, Assessor’s Office is tasked with ensuring taxes are levied equitably among its nearly 35,000 residents. Among its priorities, the office must determine whether residences are primary or secondary and tax them appropriately. The Assessor’s Office implemented Host Compliance and partnered it with TrueRoll to ensure its process was clear, accurate, and could identify additional tax base.

SITUATION

A need to efficiently identify and classify residences

Identifying and classifying residences as primary or secondary can get lost in the shuffle as residents move in and out of Wasatch County. When people bought a property, they would inherit the primary exemption from the previous owner. The Assessor’s Office had no accurate method to determine whether the property was occupied as a full-time residence.

SOLUTION

Technology modernizes manual processes

The Assessor’s Office needed a more efficient, streamlined process to properly assess property and ensure equitable tax rates. By using features of both Host Compliance and TrueRoll, the office was able to identify properties that do not qualify for residential exemption. Host Compliance helped the Assessor’s Office identify properties being listed as short- and long-term rentals. TrueRoll helped identify people who have residences in multiple states and the most probable domicile of the owner(s).

RESULTS

Drastic time savings and tax dollars redistributed

Combining the capabilities of Host Compliance and TrueRoll has had an impressive and positive impact on how the Wasatch County Assessor’s Office operates. Employees estimate that their research process time has been reduced from 60 to 30 minutes, a time savings of nearly 50%. Additionally, Host Compliance and TrueRoll helped the office identify 350 properties resulting in about $1.8 million in tax revenue to be redistributed from full-time residences to those that should have been classified as secondary.

These solutions are helping the Assessor’s Office make progress toward its mission of efficiently classifying properties and ensuring equitable property taxes are levied. The newly identified revenue is charged back to secondary property owners instead of being distributed throughout the rest of the county, ultimately reducing the tax rate for all taxpayers in Wasatch County.

“Using [Host Compliance and TrueRoll] has greatly impacted how we do things. We are saving time and are more effective in redistributing the tax base.” – Linnea Stanley, Primary Specialist, Wasatch County Assessor’s Office