Chester County explains purpose of voluntary assessment form

Below is the full message we received from the Chester County Assessment Office:

Since June of 2014, Chester County’s Assessment Office has requested voluntary completion of a sales verification form. In response to realtor concerns that completion of this form may lead to re-assessment of a client’s property, Chester County’s Director of Assessment, Jonathan Schuck, explains the purpose of the form and why it was created.

Why Chester County Assessment Office Seeks Voluntary Sales Verification Information

In 2009, the PA General Assembly adopted House Resolution 334, which charged the State’s Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to conduct a comprehensive study of the system for property valuation. The purpose of the requested action was to identify ways of making the Pennsylvania tax assessment system more uniform, transparent and cost effective. In July 2010, a report was issued which included multiple recommendations for uniform property valuation, one of which was to enhance sales data collected by the State Tax Equalization Board (STEB), located within the PA Department of Community and Economic Development.

In response to this recommendation, STEB commissioned a consultant to review the system used to calculate the common level ratio (CLR) for each county, and to determine if the performance measure was calculated in a manner consistent with International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) standards. The consultant’s report included multiple recommendations and STEB has consistently sought to implement them.

One of the recommendations was that STEB encourage county assessors to validate sales using a document such as the sales verification form developed by a committee of the Assessors’ Association of Pennsylvania (AAP).

Following a presentation by STEB at the AAP Fall 2013 Conference, the Chester County Assessment Office began development of a voluntary sales verification process. The cover letter and simplified form used by the Assessment Office today were implemented in June 2014.

For those property owners who choose to complete the voluntary sales verification form, the information is used to ensure accurate sale validation codes are included when the Chester County Assessment Office submits monthly reports to STEB, as required by statute. The form is not, nor has it ever been, intended to be a catalyst for re-assessment of a client’s property.