OHIO COUNTY, W.Va. (WTRF) – A piece of legislation passed in March of 2022 changes the way oil and gas property tax valuations are calculated in West Virginia, is causing a lot of confusion.
Last Thursday, nearly 200 Ohio County residents attended a meeting after getting two increase letters in December and January, both with different totals. The December letters had to be sent out by law, but the state wasn’t finished analyzing the data from the oil and gas companies. The state was further along when the January letters had to be released, but their work was still incomplete.
We spoke to Ohio County Assessor Tiffany Hoffman, who believes this new process is overly complicated and unfair, and notes that the West Virginia Association of Assessors has been fighting against it.
Hoffman gave us an example of how the new process works.
“If you received $16,000 in oil and gas reserves in 2021, that is put into a calculation that the state tax department came up with, and then that is your appraised value. So let’s say $16,000 I put into the calculation, it comes out to be around $44,000, and then that’s your appraised value. And then that appraised value times 60%, times the levy rate is what you’re actually being taxed on.”
TIFFANY HOFFMAN, Ohio County Assessor
If you would like to appeal your value, you can visit the website of the West Virginia Office of Tax Appeals, and we have a link set up for you at WTRF.com.
If you go to this website, you can enter in your figures to determine the appraised value of your oil and gas.
