Property Tax Rolls and Assessment
Lists
Tax rolls and assessment lists are among the best
sources for determining the age of a historic
building. They are also useful for determining chain
of ownership of a property and for plotting the
development of an area or neighborhood. In
Wisconsin, these records exist for most counties and
municipalities; very often they are more or less
complete dating back to within a dozen or so years
of when the area was settled.
Finding Tax Rolls
Ordinarily the assessor of a township or
municipality produced three copies of the property
assessments for a given year: an assessment list,
which was subject to correction, and then two tax
rolls. The tax rolls and the corrected assessment
list are substantially identical. Normally
a copy of the tax roll became part of the county
clerk or treasurer's records and was stored in the
appropriate vault. The other copy and or the
assessment list remains in the township or
municipality. For the past twenty or more years the
Society has been gathering local governmental
records, among them tax rolls and assessment lists,
for archival preservation in the Society's Area
Research Centers (ARCs). To date, tax records
have been thus collected for roughly a third of the
state. The ARCs normally keep a complete run of the
records up to 1900 and a five-year periodic sample
for the twentieth century (e.g. 1898, 1899, 1900;
1905, 1910, 1915...). Thus, you should first look
for tax rolls at the ARC serving the location being
studied.
Should the tax records not be at the ARC, the
next place to look is the county courthouse. Most
often the county clerk has charge of maintaining the
records, and they are usually stored in the
clerk's vault. Unfortunately, courthouse staffs
are not always aware that they have these records
dating back very far. This is understandable because
the staff have little occasion to use these records
and thus sometimes tell researchers that the old
records have been lost or disposed of. However,
since the Society has been designated the repository
of government archives in Wisconsin, local
governments have been prohibited by law from
disposing of their records without first offering
them to the Society. Therefore, you should be slow
to be discouraged when looking for these records.
Polite persistence very often bears results,
particularly if you can convince the clerk to take
you into the vault to look for the records. Remember
that the records are public information. But also
remember that courthouse staffs have the
responsibility to maintain the records in good
order; this responsibility sometimes causes them to
appear restrictive in allowing their use, and you
are obliged to abide by whatever rules have been
established.
If the records are not available at the
courthouse, your next step should be the town,
village, or city clerk's office in the locale you
are researching. Many of these local offices
maintain tax rolls or assessment lists dating back
to the organization of the township or municipality.
In small villages and townships the office of clerk
is often a part time position, and therefore you may
sometimes have to do some tracking down to get in
touch with the clerk and the records.
Before you use a tax roll, you will need a
property description
Once you've located the tax rolls for the area
you are interested in, you will need to do a little
background investigation to get ready to collect
your data. The first thing you need to know is the
legal description of the parcel you are interested
in. For a parcel in a municipality you will need to
know the block numbers and the name of the
appropriate plat or subdivision. If the building you
are researching predates the platting or subdividing
of the municipality, you will also need to know the
geographic description of the parcel: its town,
range, section, and quarter section. If the parcel
does not lie in a municipality, the town, range,
section and quarter section will suffice. Your
abstract should provide you with this information.
If you do not have an abstract, consult the Register
of Deeds office in the courthouse.
Next, select a time frame for your research. The
time frame you choose should be broad enough to
include any remotely possible date of construction
for your building. It usually is advisable to begin
the time frame with the earliest available tax roll
and to extend it for twenty or more years after the
suspected time of construction. This will allow you
to spot whatever development may have occurred on
the site in the years prior to the construction of
the building, and also give you a reasonable
certainty of finding construction within the time
frame. If, while you are collecting your data, you
do not find the expected jump, you should then
extend the time frame until you do.
What do tax rolls tell me about a property?
Gather and Analyze data to learn what a tax
roll can tell you about a property.
Now you are ready to collect your data.
Beginning with the earliest usable tax roll, find
the assessment for the parcel you are researching.
This sometimes takes a bit of scanning through the
list because different assessors organized the lists
differently. Occasionally an area was laid out in
government lots prior to subdivision, and you may
have to determine which government lot the parcel
was in. If such is the case, check with the Register
of Deeds.
Record the acreage, the assessed valuation, the
name of the owner, and the name of the person who
paid the tax for each year within the time frame. If
for a time the parcel was part of a larger piece of
property or assessed in a combination with other
parcels held by an individual, make a note of that
fact, or of any other information you find which
seems important.
Can you believe what a tax roll tells you
about a property's value?
Property assessments are useful for dating old
buildings because they reflect capital improvements
to a parcel of land. Most often a substantial jump
in the value of a parcel from one year to the next
indicates that construction has occurred. Further,
tax rolls and assessment lists name the owner of a
parcel and/or the person who paid the tax on it in a
particular year. Taken over a succession of years,
this information can be used to establish a chain of
ownership. Finally, assessments over time for a
number of neighboring parcels can be studied to
determine the pattern of development for an entire
area or neighborhood.
Although analysis of tax records is essentially
straightforward, there are potential pitfalls to be
aware of. First, the change in property assessments
over time actually indicates a couple of things in
addition to property improvement. General economic
trends of inflation and recession drive the assessed
valuation of real estate up and down. Periodic
reassessments revise assessments which then, barring
any capital improvements, remain stable until the
next periodic assessment. Therefore, when analyzing
assessment data it is advisable to keep an eye on
the economic trends operating in the area. This will
prevent your being misled by a rise in valuation
attributable to something other than capital
improvement. You can accomplish this simply by
observing the assessments on a parcel which you are
certain was not improved during the period under
examination and which is located near the parcel you
are studying. Valuations of the two parcels should
fluctuate similarly, in parallel fashion, until
improvement occurs on the parcel you are interested
in. Then the value of the improved parcel should
jump while the value of the unimproved parcel should
remain relatively stable. This technique will be
discussed in depth in a later section.
Second, when using tax rolls to determine chain
of ownership, be aware that the owner of record is
not always the person who pays the tax on it.
Sometimes knowing that an individual who did not
hold title to a parcel was paying tax on it can lead
to some interesting speculations, although it would
be impossible to draw conclusions from such
information without other evidence.
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