Justia Ohio Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In 2005, real property owned by Roger and Sharon Barkoff was sold for $1.4 million. In 2008, after performing the reappraisal that the law required every six years, the Summit County Fiscal Officer determined the value of the property to be $902,320. The Akron City School District Board of Education challenged the assessment, asserting that the 2005 sale price should be adopted as the value of the property. The Summit County Board of Revision retained the fiscal officer’s value. The Board of Tax Appeals (BTA) reversed, concluding that the Barkoffs had not rebutted the presumption that the sale was within a reasonable time before the tax-lien date, therefore adopting the $1.4 million sale price from 2005 as the value of the property for tax year 2008. The Supreme Court reversed the BTA’s application of the recency presumption, holding that when a property has been the subject of the reappraisal that occurs every six years, a sale that occurred more than twenty-four months before the lien date should not be presumed recent if a different value has been determined for that lien date as part of the reappraisal, and thus no presumption arises that the sale price reflects the property’s value.View "Akron City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Summit County Bd. of Revision" on Justia Law