Department Responsibilities

The function of the Brown County Equalization is to establish an assessed value for every piece of property within the county. Those property values are then used to determine the real estate tax due from that property.

Non-agricultural property is assessed according to what value in dollars it would sell for on an open market. Agricultural property is assessed according to the amount of and capability of each different soil type within an agricultural property to produce an agricultural commodity.

Those assessed values are determined annually, and property owners are notified of the assessed value of their property via an assessment notice mailed to them on or before March 1 of each year. Property taxes due the following year are then determined by that assessed value. For example, Property taxes due and payable in 2024 come from the assessed value notification from March 1, 2023.

Property owners do have the right to appeal the assessed value of their property if they believe the assessed value is above what could be considered an appropriate market value. Those appeals need to be made prior to the third Monday in March for the current assessment received on March 1. Property owners may appeal the assessed value, they are not able to appeal the tax bill.

Property is divided into three classifications, agricultural, Non-ag owner-occupied, and Non-ag other. Those classes determine which tax rate is collected against that value for the public-school general fund. All other entities collect the same tax rate regardless of the property class.

The current assessment of property occurs annually and is independent of value from any previous year. County Equalization does have the right to enter onto property to inspect or discover any attributes that would affect the taxable value of a property.

Commonly Asked Questions

Why is my value on my tax bill different than the value on the assessment notice?

Each year, each county is audited by the South Dakota Department of Revenue to determine their level assessment. The level of assessment is the median of the ratios of assessed values vs. actual sales prices of arm-length transactions of property within the county. After this audit, each county receives a multiplier (equalization factor) to apply to all non- ag property and another multiplier to apply to all agricultural property to establish a taxable value. School districts, fire districts, water development districts sanitary districts and various others, often overlap county boundaries. This assures that even though properties containing those tax districts may be situated in different counties, they are taxed at the same level of assessment even if they may not be assessed at the same level of assessment. For this reason, if a property owner wants to compare assessments from year to year, they won’t get accurate information comparing their tax bill to their assessment notice, but rather do need to look at prior year assessment notices.

Inspection of Property-Listing of Taxpayers.

The director of equalization may enter upon and inspect all property for the purpose of determining the value of the property or to discover and list property that has been omitted from the assessment rolls. Each year, the director shall list the taxpayers whose property has been inspected as provided in this section and shall file the list with the county auditor. SDCL 10-3-23