Residents are struggling to find tax bill answers online. Here’s why the calculator is off
Earlier this month, Horry County sent property assessments to thousands of taxpayers, but despite having sent that notice, the county hasn’t updated its calculator to reflect this year’s rates.
Many of them took to social media to express their shock and anger at the high price of their property.
Those values are critical because they’re used to help inform a yearly tax bill. On the Horry County Tax Assessor’s website, there’s an online calculator that will compute someone’s estimated taxes for that year.
Some local government decisions still need to be made so that the assessor’s office can accurately update their online tax calculator, according to Horry County spokeswoman Adrianna Seals.
“When it comes to that tool at least we just ask everyone to be patient with us while we work to gather the rest of the information we need to make sure that we can give you the most accurate picture when you use that tool,” Seals said.
Currently, the online calculator uses last year’s millages. Seals said it will hopefully be updated by the end of the month with the correct millages for 2024, or this year’s tax cycle.
For unincorporated Horry County, that millage number should hopefully be finalized after Tuesday’s County Council meeting when the resolution will be up to a vote.
One reason is that the exact rates for this year’s tax bills are still being finalized at the local government level, and some numbers from previous years tell a different story.
The total appraised values for all Horry County parcels in 2019 was $58,579,813,495, according to the tax assessor’s office.
Four years later, in 2023, that number had almost doubled to $112,413,394,050.
Those vast numbers substantiate what officials and real estate professionals have been saying: property value in the Myrtle Beach area has gone up.
In the past year, data from housing site Zillow reports homes in the Myrtle Beach area increased by 1.2%, bringing the average home value to $307,395 per home.
That’s about $10,000 higher than the South Carolina state average, which Zillow calculated at $298,598.
However, these values aren’t the county’s only numbers for calculating the tax bills sent out in October.
According to Seals, home assessments are just one piece of that total value.
In 2023 the baseline millage for unincorporated Horry County was 56.2, Seals said. That number is the base that taxes were billed at in October 2023.
This year’s pending baseline millage is 52.1.
That proposed lower millage number could impact October tax bills if passed. According to Seals, it has to do with a rollback that’s required by the state and has to do with the every five year property reassessment law.
“Because overall Horry County’s assessed property value has gone up a certain amount, Finance [Department] ran the numbers and determined that it needs to go down to the 52 number to help keep everything balanced and equalized across unincorporated Horry County,” she said. “This is to help balance out that while yes your assessed property value has increased, the rollback millage is one of those protections from the state that helps keep your property taxes lower.”
Since that millage, some of the local municipalities’ millages, and the Horry County School District millage haven’t been finalized yet. Seals said there’s no way for property owners to calculate what their October bill will be right now.
She also clarified that the baseline does not include any special tax districts, the school district or other millage that community members may see if they live in an incorporated part of Horry County.
The property reassessment notices that were mailed out earlier this month are not tax bills, according to the assessor’s office.
“It’s just the county notifying you that we have assessed your property to be at a higher value than it was previously,” Seals said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that your taxes are going to get higher or that your taxes are going to go up.”
Overall, Seals said they also want to remind people to keep in mind their entire tax picture. That includes property such as land, homes, brick and mortar businesses, cars, trucks, Recreational Vehicles and boats.
“So the overall picture of the amount that you pay in taxes to Horry County should not change drastically from what it did when you paid in previous years,” she said. “Unless you did something like you went and bought a brand new $50,000 truck or you moved, or you had some sort of other major change to your personal tax picture.”
