According to research by the Scientific Research and Documentation Centre, municipalities must do their best to determine the WOZ-value of homes more accurately. BNNVARA television program Kassa paid attention to this report. Arjen Schep, professor by special appointment of Local Government Taxes at Erasmus School of Law, states in the episode that the method used by municipalities is not ideal, but that it is necessary.
Due to the scale and the legal system of the annual WOZ valuation, whereby approximately eight million homes receive a new valuation, it is impossible for municipalities to value each house individually through an appraiser. “This situation makes that municipalities can only take a good look at how the individual home actually differs from the homes with which it is compared in the model upon objection and appeal,” says Schep.
Schep sees a function in this current system for so-called no-cure-no-pay agencies, which, based on the no-cure-no-pay tariff structure, objects to WOZ valuations for citizens. That these agencies can earn a lot of money by offering these services, “is inevitable”, according to Schep. Errors in the WOZ valuation are simply possible based on the current system. “If municipalities are unable to properly explain to the court how a WOZ value determined by the model relates to the home of the objector, the court will not uphold it and will go along with the arguments of the no-cure-no-pay agency.''
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View the full program of Kassa (in Dutch) here.
