By GEORGE CHANDLER
Los Alamos County Assessor
This year and next year you will see a number of changes in your Notice of Value (NOV).
Mailing and Protest dates: State Law normally requires us to mail the Notice of Value no later than the first day of April. Because of some of the changes discussed below, and the effective date of certain legislation that affected them, the Property Tax Division gave us a 30 day waiver that allowed us to mail the NOV’s for tax year 2025 on April 30, 2025. That has the additional effect of pushing the last day to file a protest to May 30 2025.
Veterans: The Veteran’s $4,000 exemption was increased to $10, 000. If you have already filed for the exemption, you need do nothing, you will automatically see an increase and it will appear on your tax bill. If you are a veteran and have not filed, please contact our office or visit our website to learn how to apply.
Disabled Veterans: No change for 100% disabled veterans who will continue to be eligible for a 100% exemption from property taxes.
Partially Disabled Veterans: Starting in the 2026 tax year, partially disabled veterans will be eligible for an exemption in an amount equal to the percentage of disability as determined by the federal government. You can apply now for this benefit, starting with obtaining a certificate of eligibility from the New Mexico Office of Veteran’s Affairs. Our office can provide you with forms and information on the process.
Stacking benefits: Nearly every taxpayer is eligible for a Head of Household $2,000 exemption on their residence. As a veteran you and /or your veteran spouse may be eligible for two or more exemptions and they can be “stacked” according to a formula to be determined by our office and the Property Tax Division based on an ongoing review of the enabling legislation. This formula is still being worked out.
Fair Market Value: for years there has been a discrepancy in the way property taxes are calculated and the way the calculation was printed on our NOV. In general, property taxes are assessed according to this formula:
tax = {[(full value) times 1/3] minus (sum of exemptions)} times (tax rate).
–where full value represents the fair market value arrived at by the Assessor according to appraisal standards and based on an evaluation of the market as of the end of the previous tax year. In 2000, in response to dramatic increases in the taxes on residential property in parts of New Mexico that were driving many older residents out of their homes, the legislature imposed a 3% annual cap on the increase in the full value of a home. Thus the “full value” number in the formula is no longer the fair market value of the home, but the lesser of the fair market value and a number that is 3% more than the full value from the last tax year. Now the tax calculation has the preliminary step of determining which value to use, and to satisfy the statutory requirement that the tax calculation be included with the NOV the fair market value would have to be provided. We have made that change in the 2025 tax year.
The history of this provision includes several years in the 2000’s when the full market value was used in most cases. But after recovering from the 2008 financial debacle we have now had a long streak of market value increases greater than 3% and many people who have owned their homes for more than a year in Los Alamos have never seen a year when full value equaled fair market value (If you sell your home, the value resets to fair market value for the new owner – “tax lightning”!).
We have had a number of questions about this as people are surprised to see what we have determined to be the fair market value. For most it will have no effect on their taxes because of the cumulative effect of a long series of applications of the 3% cap, and in most of these instances we cannot accept formal protests of the fair market value. To help us in our quality control, however, we will inspect and investigate and consider changes if it is brought to our attention that we may have missed the mark.
Just FYI, we collect data on every sale of residential property and compare sales prices to our appraisals. These are called sales ratio studies, they are required by the state, and they are an important tool of Assessors. Overall, for 2024 our median sales ratio was 99%, mean 98.6%, standard deviation 5%, on over 400 qualified sales.
If you’ve plowed through all this – thanks! – and if you still have questions, call or visit us at 505.662.8030, or room 210 in the Municipal Building at 1000 Central Ave.