Counties levy and collect property tax to provide local services and support for independent local taxing districts, such as cities and schools. The State of Idaho doesn’t receive any property tax.
Property tax applies to all nonexempt property including:
Role of the Tax Commission
The Tax Commission’s Property Tax Division oversees the property tax system to ensure compliance with state laws. The Tax Commission also determines the assessed value of operating property such as electric utility companies, railroads and railcar companies.
The Tax Commission doesn’t collect property tax.
Each year your county assessor’s office must estimate how much a typical buyer would pay for your property as of January 1. It’s assessed at 100% of market value less any exemptions. Check with your county assessor to find out which exemptions might apply.
Generally, assessors use sales prices from properties in the county to develop guidelines. They also consider features that could influence what a buyer would pay for the property. These features include size, location, quality of construction, age and condition.
Contact your county assessor if you have any questions about your property’s valuation.
Your county assessor’s office also can provide you with the form required to declare personal property for your business.
If you disagree with your assessment, take these steps in this order:
All property is located in multiple taxing districts. Taxing districts are government units (e.g., county, city, school district, sewer district fire district, library district).
Every year, a taxing district develops a budget to cover all its services. Once the budget is approved, the part of the budget funded by property tax is divided by the total taxable value of all properties within that taxing district. This number is the tax rate for that area for that taxing district.
All applicable taxing districts repeat this process. The total is the total property tax rate for that area.
George's property is a house located in the fictitious city of New Town, Idaho. This city is one taxing district. The New Town city council passed a budget of $9,500,000. The total taxable value of all property in the city is $5,495,800,420. Dividing the first figure by the second figure yields the New Town city tax rate of 0.001728.
All the other taxing districts for the property he owns repeat this process. In this case, those districts are: county, fire, highway, library, school, sewer, ambulance, and weed control. Once their tax rates (percentages) are added to the city's rate, the total rate for George's property is 0.01352.
The total amount of property tax that George owes is calculated like this:
You can find the average urban and rural tax rates for each Idaho county in the Annual Report. Contact your county treasurer for specific tax rate information.