How does your county handle ownership under county roads and highways when they are easements and private landowners own the property.
Does the county tax the landowner, are they not taxed and automatically removed, does the landowner have to ask the county to remove the land from being taxed?
Generally...(because there are always exceptions)..
Most Oklahoma counties tax the entire parcel, including RWs and easements.
What generally happens with roadways:
If the easement or RW becomes an arterial route or is in need of upgrade and widening the city, county (or sometimes state) purchases the RW in fee. At that time the taxable area of an estate is generally recalculated.
The key seems to be an actual conveyance of title.
I don't think it would make a difference since the assessment is usually based on value and not sq. footage. The property would be valued the same whether the road was an easement or if you didn't own the land, since function of the land is the same. The only time it seems to make a difference is if the sq. footage is advantageous because of some minimum lot size requirement and the road area helps to make the lot larger for this calculation. I have seen it where it made a buildable lot out of what would have been unbuildable if the road area was not included.
I always find the "I'm paying taxes on the land under the road" as humorous - I'm married to an appraiser.
> How does your county handle ownership under county roads and highways when they are easements and private landowners own the property.
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> Does the county tax the landowner, are they not taxed and automatically removed, does the landowner have to ask the county to remove the land from being taxed?
Per the Texas Property Tax Code as stated by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts:
"Public roads owned by the county are exempt from taxation whereas a privately owned road, although platted and recorded as being subject to a public easement, is taxable. Once accepted by the government the road becomes tax exempt, however. Op. Tex. Att'y Gen. No. GA-0139 (2004)."
A link to the Attorney General's Opinion mentioned above with some interesting discussion of various aspects of the status of dedicated public roads in Texas:
Generally speaking, in Nebraska the county roads are typically 66' in width and the landowner is taxed to the section line, or for the 33' width on his/her side. Highways are owned by the State and adjacent landowners own to the ROW line. In my individual county, Lancaster, the County has purchased the ROW when widening is needed. One of the problems was purchasing an additional 17' on each side to extend it out to 50', but failing to purchase the original 33'.
The assessor does not automatically change the taxes when ROW that was formerly an easement is purchased. A smart landowner can appeal and get this changed.
Road ROWs
I have a parcel here in Cody (Park County) that has never been in a subdivision (no dedicated RoW) and is burdened by an easement established around 1905 for a county road when this was still part of Big Horn County.
Until I asked the assessor's office to reduce the taxable area to the net area (gross area less the easement area) they were happily assessing me on the gross area. The deputy assessor did not seem to mind reducing the taxable area to the net area, but there is no reason to believe the change would have ever happened if I had not asked.
Interestingly, the polygon on the assessor's GIS system has always outlined the net area even though they assessed and the treasurer taxed on the gross area until I requested the change.
GB
Typical the owners are taxed on the gross, but in the evaluation there is a 0 value placed on the area subject to the 'public area' of the road right-of-way.
One reason for that is that the amount paid to you is the value of your property before the taking less the value of the property after taking, this is the damages. Since your property has the same value whether you technically own to the center line or the edge of road (the 33'), there are no damages. However, taking the additional 17' does have value since you currently have full use of the land and reducing your usable land will reduce the value. That is the amount that will be paid to you. Hope this makes sense - It's getting close to midnight and I heading off to sleep:-)
Road ROWs
You are doing it the only way I know how to do it, request it. There is also a topographic reduction you can try if you have a lot with a steep slope. The highway land is called waste land and will completely be removed from taxation.
What they do (did) was make a mess. The county tax descriptions where written to - less x.xx acres in County Road. This would remove the acreage from property taxes. That's all fine except landowners would use the abbreviated tax description to convey the property. Why not, they send it to you every year, just photo copy it for the next deed. So it gets confusing, your deed says less x.xx acres in the county road and the only way to find out who actually owns fee title to the road is to abstract it all the way back and see if a conveyance to the county was ever granted.
I followed one all the way back to patent. First deed a couple years after patent has a less about 2 acres in the county road. No deed to the county on record for the road but every deed since has the less 2 acres in county road. So who owns the road, some dead guy in the cemetery, the county or the current landowner? There is no question about a county ROW, been there for over a hundred years now.
