About 25,000 Douglas County property owners received their tax bills this week prompting the county's phones to ring.
Clerk-Treasurer Ted Thran said he's moved into the treasurer's office to help field phone calls from taxpayers with questions about their bills.
"We do get innundated with phone calls," he said.
The most common question?
The value of my house went down, why didn't my taxes?
While median home values dropped an estimated 47 percent in East Fork Township from a peak of $432,000 in September 2005 to the valley of $229,000 in January 2009, in many cases taxes did not reflect that.
That's because in July 2005, the Legislature established a 3 percent cap on residential property taxes. The cap served to prevent assessments that reflected property values during the peak of the bubble.
But the cap didn't reduce homes assessed value to 3 percent, just the taxes charged on them.
Thran said that in most cases the 3-percent cap has yet to catch up with homes' assessed value.
"If we were still under the old law, taxes would be extremely high," Thran said. "But with the 3 percent cap, taxes haven't caught up with with the established value. Our values are still lower than fair market value."
In Nevada, homeowners are assessed at 35 percent of the value of their home.
Thran includes a brochure with the tax bills this year in an effort to explain how homes are assessed and taxed.
Residents who've built homes since 2005 were assessed at the full value of their home in the first year and have received the abatement, which is listed on the tax bill for subsequent years.
