We along with our Coalition members at the Topsail Island Association of REALTORS® have been receiving many inquiries with regard to the current tax revaluation and the associated appeals process. We have posed this question to the Pender County Tax Assessor, Anthony Masiero for a more complete response. Following is that response:

The informal appeal process as the name implies is not a statutory step. It’s done mostly to catch any no brainer errors we may have made, which are commonly keying errors – with close to 50,000 parcels it’s bound to happen. The deadline is set so we can finish accumulating all of the informal appeals, make decisions on them, and correct them in our software and mail out decision letters in time to start the formal appeal process, the Board of Equalization and Review (BOER).

The BOER process is statutory, and has to begin no later than the first Monday in May which is why we set up a deadline for the informal appeals. The BOER can start as early as the first Monday in April, and so we will start it as soon as we can but the volume of the informals will dictate that to some degree. If someone misses the informal process they can still by law appeal up until the BOER adjourns for the year.  While it’s not required we’d certainly prefer anyone that is going to appeal do so through the informal process first because it might be just a clerical error on their record, and we’d like to fix those. Plus it gives us a better forecast of how many BOER appeals we’ll have.

The taxpayer can continue on and appeal BOER decisions to the Property Tax Commission at the state level, and those decisions can be appealed to the State Court of Appeals and on up to the State Supreme Court.