The assessment roll, sometimes called the assessment list, or the assessment book, in which the taxed properties are entered at the values fixed by the assessor, is a formidable public document of many pages and often in many volumes, and when completed serves as the warrant for the collection of the taxes, and finally ac a rernrd of tavec naid The roll is written anew parh .,Par and the entries are always revised for changes in ownership, new build ings, changes in personal property and the like, and, as often as may be necessary, is completely revised as to the land values. It is customary to assess all property for much less than its full market value, although in almost every State the words of the law direct the use of full value.
Review or "equalization" of the roll after the assessor has com pleted his work consists, in the main, in allowing taxpayers who feel that their property is too heavily assessed to have a hearing before some board, usually the county governing board or the city fathers, called a board of review or of equalization. After this review the roll passes to the auditor who extends the taxes, showing how much each person is to pay and then to the tax collector.
The rate of the tax is expressed as so many mills on the dollar of assessed value, or as so many cents or dollars and cents per too dollars. Thus a tax of io mills on the dollar is equivalent in the other form to $1.00 on the $1oo. The rate is arrived at in one of two ways. The most common method is to estimate first how much money will be needed to run the Government for the year, and then to divide that sum by the total of the assessment roll, thus getting the tax rate. But naturally the total to be raised is seldom fixed without attention to what the resulting tax-rate will be. The other method is to fix rates for each activity of govern ment as : 5 mills for schools, 2 for roads, i for the hospital ; or for each branch of government as : 5 mills for the county, 2 for the village or district, 5 for the State ; and then to require or attempt to require that each activity confine its expenses to the amount of money these rates will yield. In some of the states where all
branches of government, from the smallest school district or vil lage through the towns and cities, and the counties up to and including the state itself, levy on the general property tax the rate applied to any one taxpayer is a combination of three or more tax levies, the state, the county, and as many local districts or divisions as include his property. Thus a common occurrence would be about 5o cents State tax, 5o cents county tax, 75 cents town or city tax, 25 cents primary school district tax, and ro cents high school district tax. Many more may occur.
Cities sometimes make an assessment of the property within their boundaries in addition to and separate from the assessment made for the other branches of government. This is most often the case where the assessment roll for all other branches of gov ernment is a county roll. The valuations on the two rolls do not usually agree. In fact the city roll is apt to show higher values because the main reason for incurring this otherwise wasteful cost is to obtain a lower tax rate. This is a bit of camouflage, because if the tax I have to pay on a house worth $1o,000 is $1 oo, it makes no difference to me whether it is computed as $1.00 per hundred on $10,000 assessed value, or $2.00 per hundred on $5,000 assessed value.
Equalization of Assessments.—Equalization between dis tricts becomes of great importance whenever several different branches of government levy heavy taxes on the same roll. Equal ization between individuals in the same district is, as indicated above, generally left to a local board. At one time, when the State's government expenses were relatively small, the State's needs were apportioned roughly to the districts, which then col lected enough money in addition to their own needs to cover this charge. But as the State activities grew and the State's share became :large, let us say as much as 5o cents on each Sioo of assessed value, it made a serious difference if one locality or dis trict had a low valuation and another a high one. So State boards of equalization were established which raised or lowered any district assessment roll which seemed to be out of line with the others. This proved a crude remedy and to-day in many States there are State tax commissions among whose duties it is to supervise and direct the work of the local assessors all the time. The object of this supervision is to make the assessments uniform.