Assessor

Property tax is a locally-assessed state tax based on the assessed value of your real and/or personal property. Taxes reported to the federal or state governments directly are most commonly based on transactions like income or sales, not on property values.

Personal property tax is listed, assessed, and paid at the county level to fund the same local services as real property taxes. Examples include public schools, county services & operations, cities & towns, libraries, parks & recreation, emergency medical, hospitals, fire departments, and ports.

Instructions for completing the paper listing form are on the form itself. If you have a CPA or other tax professional who handles your property taxes, they will likely be familiar with the process.

In most cases, if you provided an asset list in a prior year, that list will be included on the following year's listing form. This allows you to simply cross-out assets you have removed from your business, and write-in assets you acquired during the previous year. The desired result is a current list of all assets used by the business as of the yearly January 1 lien date.

According to RCW 84.40.130, a penalty of 5% of the amount of the following year tax is assessed for each month the listing is late up to a maximum of 25%. This is a percentage of the taxes due, not a percentage of the value. For example, if the listing is returned in May the penalty is 5%. In June the penalty increases to 10%, and so on until it reaches the maximum of 25% on September 1. The penalty (appearing as a percentage on the Notice of Value) is converted into a dollar amount due on the following year's tax bill.

Clark County considers a government postmark of April 30th as a timely filing. Hand-delivered listings are date-stamped by our office on the date received, and listings submitted electronically are automatically date-stamped. A postage meter stamp is not considered proof of timely filing.

This notice is the summary of the assessed value of all the business assets you reported owning as of January 1st on your listing. Per RCW 84.40.030, the Assessor’s Office is required to value those assets each year at 100% market value.

If a business does not return a listing, the prior year’s historic value is used to establish the current year value and the maximum late-filing penalty is applied. Any late-filing penalty percentage appearing on the Notice of Value will be converted into a dollar amount due on the following year's tax bill.

You have the right to appeal your value to the Clark County Board of Equalization (BOE) within 60 days of the date shown on any value notice you receive from our office. Most value disagreements on personal property accounts are the result of either an error or a misunderstanding of the process however, and these can usually be corrected without an appeal.

Whenever an error is found in your personal property assessment, regardless of cause, the Assessor's Office wants to fix it. If you believe that errors were made either in our assessment process or in your reporting, please email that information to Personal.Property@clark.wa.gov for us to review. We are able to fix errors to the current and three prior assessments without the involvement of any other departments.

Additional information about the appeal process and appeal forms, are available on the BOE web site, by visiting their office in Vancouver at 1300 Franklin Street, Suite 650, or by calling their office at 360-397-2337. Late-filing penalties are not values, so they cannot be appealed.

Tax bills are mailed by the Clark County Treasurer’s Office every February. Property tax payments are due by April 30th and October 31st of each year to that office. The taxes are based on the prior year’s assessment, but the Assessor's Office only has limited information about taxes beyond that. Most tax questions will be referred to the Treasurer's Office.