||| FROM SAN JUAN COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS |||
Starting today, information regarding the 2025 tax season is available on the San Juan County Treasurer’s website. In accordance with RCW 84.56.020(1), County Treasurer, Rhonda Pederson, is providing notification that the 2025 tax roll has been completed would like to remind county property owners that real and personal property taxes and assessments are due and payable to the San Juan County Treasurer on or before April 30, 2025.
Residents can expect 2025 tax statements to arrive in their mailboxes by mid-February. Learn more on the website: http://www.sanjuancountywa.
How to pay your property taxes:
- Pay taxes online via the payment portal. This option allows you to pay for multiple properties at once (while avoiding multiple transaction fees!), schedule on-time payments, receive an instant receipt, and create an account to make future transactions even easier. Visit the portal here: https://statics.teams.cdn.
office.net/evergreen-assets/ safelinks/1/atp-safelinks.html - Pay by phone using our automated service 877-816-9299 (processing fees apply)
- Mailed Payments
- via postal mail: Po Box 639; Friday Harbor WA 98250-0639
- via UPS/FedEx: 350 Court St, 1st Floor; Friday Harbor WA 98250
- Pay by check via the secure drop box located at the Court House entrance on 2nd Street (Sheriff’s side).
Unsure what your property tax balance is or if you’ve already paid?
Use San Juan County payment portal to view amounts due for 2025 and prior years, if applicable. You may also contact our office with questions or concerns by phone, 360-378-2171 or email at treasurer@sanjuancountywa.gov. We are available Monday – Friday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
About the San Juan County Treasurer’s Office
The San Juan County Treasurer’s Office acts as the bank for the county, school districts, fire districts, special purpose districts, and other units of local government. The treasurer is also charged with the collection of various taxes that benefit a wide range of governmental functions. The department’s main office is located at 350 Court Street, Friday Harbor, WA 98250. For more information about San Juan County’s Treasurer’s Office, visit http://www.sanjuancountywa.
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Be prepared for a big surprise when you look at your property taxes for 2025. Mine have jumped by 22% from 2024 and there has been no new construction or any other physical changes to the property. Living on our island has always had its financial challenges. But sadly, increases like this by the county are rapidly making the island habitable only by the very wealthy.
Property taxes in Washington State are based on property assessment values and tax levies, some of which are voter approved (i.e, fire district, library, local heath districts, etc.) and others that are a complicated state calculation (i.e., state school taxes, state general fund).
But everything starts with the property assessment value determined by the County Assessor’s office.
So the first thing to examine is your property assessment valuation. Very basic: The two valuations are “improvements” and “land”.
For improvements : Assessors first use proprietary software that is update by matrixes that essentially change with the cost of construction. County assessors make dozens of software entries such as condition codes and depreciation.
That software calculation is then multiplied by a neighborhood adjustment, which is (supposedly) based on a Department of Revenue statistical valuation of 16 months of neighborhood sales where sales price is divided by the assessor’s valuation at time of sale. This can change a property valuation by hundreds of thousands of dollar … for example, my neighborhood multiplier was 148%.
Then, some property valuations are multiplied by a subdivision adjustment. San Juan County has some 1,165 subdivisions mostly based on last century plat maps. That is about one subdivision of every 17 parcels.
None of this is shown to the public on the normal assessor screens. It’s available, but you have to know what to ask for. These neighborhood and subdivision adjustments can amount to hundreds of thousand os dollars. And in the case of the HOA where I live, they can change yearly depending on what plat of land your parcel was recorded last century. I’m in a Washington State tax case that includes trying to make neighborhood and subdivision multipliers shown on screens that are readily available.
The public has an opportunity to appeal their parcel valuations within 30 days by appealing to the local Board of Equalization (BOE) . But after three years of appeals and watching appeal hearings (they are available to the public on ZOOM), it became clear the San Juan County BOE had never been informed or trained on neighborhood and subdivision multipliers. They appear to have no clue as to the process of how the Assessor’s office actually values properties and how that affects the Assessor’s calculated value. One experienced BOE member said this year neighborhood and subdivision adjustments are of no concern to the BOE. Strongly disagree.
I’ll wrap up with one additional comment. Vacation rentals that operate as businesses are not recognized by the Assessor’s office. They are essentially business income and significant tax write offs for the wealthy. Full cost depreciation over 27.5 years, all management fees, utilities, cost to travel for “inspections” are fully deductible. For prime properties, this is a San Juan County issue that is inflating neighborhood and occasional subdivision values. And the Assessor’s office is using these some of these high valuation properties as comp, inflating neighborhood ratio multipliers.
Thanks, Peter, for the heads up, and many thanks to Robert for explaining the complexity of the changes in property valuations. Our property valuations will likely soar again next year because the costs of construction will increase significantly as the impacts on inflation of the 25% Trump tariffs on Canada and Mexico play out. Tariffs are a tax on us citizens, not on the exporting country. And they will impact supply chains which will further increase inflation. This is basic economics that Trump appears incapable of understanding.
We have been attempting to build a house with/for our son, Erik. Last year while still under construction (as we are still) the property was assessed at an absurd
amount. I called and discussed it with an appraiser, offered comparables and the amount was somewhat adjusted, but not enough. We then appealed to the Board of Equalization. What the Appraiser’s office then offered as their comparables were three properties on completely different parts of the island and two were Vacation Rentals. At our hearing I objected that they were not in the same locale and the two Vacation Rentals were actually income generating businesses and could not be considered similar. The BOE said that the Appraiser’s office asserts that a Vacation Rental permit do not affect property value. I said most realtors would disagree. We are still under construction and our son’s appraisal went up again. We are appealing.
Establishing county wide property values is a large task but the mass appraisal process that is used is a very blunt instrument with some dubious assumptions.
Thank you Robert. This is an important issue that affects all property owners in SJC.
Sometimes you run across something that doesn’t quite pass the sniff test, something that doesn’t quite seem right but you’re unable to put a finger on it, something that seems more complicated than it should be and cannot be explained by the experts in a manner that’s understandable to common citizens… and this is one of them.
It’s all in how it’s presented. Statistics don’t lie… but statisticians do. Short term vacation rentals artificially inflate property values throughout SJC