South Carolina vehicle property tax appeal documentation?

[eclarkso]

My 2023 Standard Model 3 (~14K miles) is being valued at $39330 for SC/county/city property taxes, which is more than reality. Per my county (Richland), to appeal I should send "a current appraisal (retail value) by a dealer of the same make vehicle". Does anyone have any experience (or educated guess) what satisfies that?

I sent in screenshots and a table of 9 listings in SC or neighboring states from Carmax, Carvana and Tesla, each of which with 10-20K miles (average ~$31.5K FWIW), and the response was "You will have to submit documentation from the TESLA dealership in order to appeal".

I replied that 3 of the listings were from Tesla, so do they want a PDF of them printed out or... ?

Hopefully they can provide some clarity (which I can relay here for future searchers), but I figured I might make other inquires and perhaps short-circuit a lengthy back-and-forth if possible.

 

[Jeremy3292]

It’s not worth it bc the math doesn’t math. Even if you were able to get something, we are talking $50 less in taxes or something. Not like you’ll get the bill cut in half

 

[eclarkso]

Half, no - but it's a lot more than $50?

My bill is $1150, nearly all of which is pro rata. If a fair valuation is ~$29-32K, then that's a $2-300 difference in a single year (and some next year, and the year after that...).

The latest response is that I need "an appraisal from Tesla. They need to provide you company documentation on their company letterhead of the same make and model".

Maybe it's just me, but that seems like a really weird (and hard to satisfy) request for a used car.. I may just try PDF'ing a used listing like https://www.tesla.com/m3/order/5YJ3E1EA0PF406622 and see if that suffices...

 

[bbbbrass]

My county (Dorchester County, Summerville/St. George office) uses KBB fair market private party value. I have 20K miles on my 2023 RWD, and I was able to get my tax bill knocked from $770 to $640 for about 5 minutes at the auditors office.

 

[eclarkso]

I have no idea what Richland Co. is using; their insistence and definition of what a current retail appraisal comprises is still a mystery to me - I ended up sending a PDF of a single Tesla used listing and they didn't object finally, so maybe that worked?

But it turns out SCDMV registered my car with an incorrect VIN (!) so I had to have that fixed before the county would process the appeal, and now I'm waiting... Glad that Summerville sounds like a more streamlined operation.

 

[bbbbrass]

I have no idea what Richland Co. is using; their insistence and definition of what a current retail appraisal comprises is still a mystery to me - I ended up sending a PDF of a single Tesla used listing and they didn't object finally, so maybe that worked?

But it turns out SCDMV registered my car with an incorrect VIN (!) so I had to have that fixed before the county would process the appeal, and now I'm waiting... Glad that Summerville sounds like a more streamlined operation.

Yikes! That is rough. I had the app all ready to prove my milage and they didn't even want to verify it.