Learn More About the Assessors Role During Appraisal

The Tennessee Association of Assessing Officers is a professional association of the Volunteer State's elected Assessors of Property. The association promotes professionalism and best practices in the assessment field.

The role of the Assessor of Property is often misunderstood. Click the links below to learn more about the jobs we do, how we do them, and what the Tennessee Assessors does for Tennessee's property owners.

Assessors of Property work under state law and regulations that require that all property be appraised at its market value as of January 1 of the tax year. The Property Assessment Division of the State Comptroller's Office oversees the process.

The Assessor of the Property's role in all this is simply to get an equitable appraisal in place so that all property owners are treated fairly. The Assessor of Property has no interest in making any appraisal higher or lower than it should be. As an association, the Tennessee Assessors fights to maintain a level playing field with uniformity for all property owners and to obtain the education, technology, and latest training needed for Assessors of Property and their staffs to accomplish their work with the highest degree of professionalism.

Contrary to popular opinion, Assessors of Property do not set the property tax bill for citizens. Assessors of Property are charged by law with finding and listing all taxable real estate and business tangible personal property, classifying it according to use, appraising it at its market value, and then producing an assessment roll. The assessment roll is then provided to the local governments to use as a factor in determining the tax rate the local legislative body will apply to the assessments.

Assessors of Property are not tax collectors. Neither do any of their evaluations of property affect any other type of tax, such as sales or excise tax? Property taxes within the individual counties are the only levy affected by Assessors of Property, and even then, it is important to note that Assessors of Property do not have any bearing on the tax rate or the final tax bill.

The Assessor of Property's primary interest is ensuring that all properties are treated equitably. They willingly consider all information made available to them that helps determine market value. Property owners who disagree with the appraised value set on their property are encouraged to express their opinion and provide documentation that supports their opinion.

In Tennessee, much of this is accomplished in an informal process of reviews where the property owner sits down with the assessment staff and presents the information. If it appears that legitimate reasons exist to reduce the appraisal, the change can be made without having the property owner go through a formal hearing before the county's board of equalization.

In most cases, the informal review process resolves any issues. If the matter isn't settled there, an appeal can be made to the local board. If the result doesn't satisfy the property owner, an appeal to the State Board of Equalization can be filed, and if a disagreement still remains, it can be pursued in the courts.

During every session of the Tennessee General Assembly, legislation is introduced affecting the duties and responsibilities of Tennessee's Assessors of Property and the methods and indices they use to appraise properties. The TNAAO closely monitors and evaluates each bill related to the assessment profession.

Many of these bills come from special interest groups, whose primary aim is to lower the amount of property tax their special class of members pays. Such legislation invariably results in shifting a portion of the tax burden onto other taxpayers, with single-family homeowners the usual victims.

While legislation can be good when used to correct situations creating an inequity, most often, the assessment-related bills coming from special interest groups are aimed at giving an advantage to a narrowly defined group of property owners.

One of the primary duties of the Tennessee Assessors Executive Director is to spearhead monitoring of all legislation presented in the General Assembly to determine what effect, if any, it might have on the appraisal process, the Assessors of Property, or the property owners and taxpayers they serve. Another duty is to assist in the drafting of legislation needed to enable the Assessors of Property to perform their duties in a more efficient and effective manner, thus benefiting all Tennesseans.

The Tennessee Assessors also has a policy committee comprised of Assessors of Property from specifically different-sized counties, with different size offices, in different parts of the State to ensure the fairest policies and best practices are pursued to further establish uniformity and equality for all Tennesseans across the State. The Executive Director works closely with officials from the Tennessee Comptroller's Division of Property Assessment and the staff of the State Board of Equalization to ensure the property assessment system in Tennessee stays fair and equitable.

The diligence of the Executive Director and policy committee has resulted in the Tennessee Assessors being able to prevent numerous pieces of bad legislation from being passed into law while providing the Assessors of Property with the tools they need to perform their work more efficiently.

A primary objective of Tennessee Assessors of Property is to achieve equity for all property owners. We fight hard to stop legislation that would threaten equity and unfairly shift a tax burden onto certain taxpayers' homes.