With tax season upon us, most of you will be calculating your property tax warrant in the coming weeks within Avitar Assessing.  We want to remind/inform you about a couple of items before you do so.

Interest Rate Change
Beginning April 1, 2019, HB1673 changed the interest rate on delinquent property taxes from 12% to 8%.  How does this affect you?  While calculating the property tax warrant in Assessing, the Tax Totals report signature page displays the interest rate amount on the report (“…with interest at twelve (12%) percent per annum…”) using an interest rate number that is edited in a text box before you generate the report.

When you print the Tax Totals report, before you select the button “Print Totals & Signature Page”, you will need to locate the Interest Rate text box on the bottom left hand side of the dialog box and update the interest rate from “12” to “8”. Note that currently interest rate changes are not saved to the database (because until now they never changed) so the rate will revert to “12” each time you reopen the dialog box. With the next software update interest rate changes will be saved, but for now make certain to manually update the rate.

Commercial and Industrial Construction Exemption
If your municipality has adopted RSA 72:81 Commercial and Industrial Construction Exemption, before you calculate the property tax warrant, you’ll want to be on the lookout for and install an Assessing update that we will be distributing within the next week.  This update includes new functionality for you to maintain the exemption in the system and to properly calculate the warrant with the exemption as the 72:81 exemption applies to only the local school and municipal portions of the tax rate. Instructions how to enable and maintain the exemption as well as what changes to expect while calculating the warrant will be included in the update notes which will be available with the update.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions.