Fun with Jackson County Property Taxes

So out here in Jackson County, Missouri, we've had a lot of fun with our local government of late. Most notably, they decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing by rocketing our property taxes into the stratosphere. Here's one example,

In the northwestern part of that 50 square miles, Alan Young owns several vacant lots where he grows vegetables. One of the lots, at the corner of 39th Street and Wayne Avenue, saw an assessment increase of more than 2,000%.

Normally I would say something like that is too ridiculous to believe without seeing the documents. However, we had one property we've owned since 2011 increase in value from $19,016 to $118,971, an absolutely absurd 525.6%, so I fully believe it.

Indeed, the properties in our portfolio increased by approximately 70%. And the one's that didn't go up nearly that much, all seemed to go up 14.9%. Which is no coincidence, as KCTV5 found in one of their multi-part report, "28% of Jackson County see the same tax increase." Why you ask?

Why such a specific target? Missouri state law requires a physical inspection if any property increases in value above 15%.

How convenient. 

One real estate investor found some other embarrassing flaws. For example,

Two vacant lots Pech owns were valued less than $5,000 last year, but now those two lots are valued by the county at around $45,000.

And it just gets worse and worse. A whistleblower says that Jackson County didn't use MLS data but instead relied on a complimentary data feed. Overall, the thing is a giant mess. Now there is a class action lawsuit against the county and a motion has been submitted by Preston Smith (that has been delayed) to cap the increases at 14%. 

Hopefully it passes or they just redo this whole mess because right now it would appear Jackson County is dead set on bankrupting as many of its own citizens as possible.