Valuation tax relief for more than 5000 property owners Thousands of SA homeowners will save fees, taxes and rates after appealing to reduce their property prices. TELL US: Did your valuation fall? How will this help you? THOUSANDS of property owners are winning tax discounts on bills - ranging from council rates to water charges - by challenging the State Government's valuation of their home. In the past two years, just over half of the 10,681 people who challenged the official valuation of their property had the figure reduced. The lower valuations can save owners hundreds of dollars on government bills because they are used to calculate council rates, water bills and other state taxes, so that people who have more property wealth pay more. Figures released by the State Valuation Office show that 38 property owners went even further than an appeal to the Valuer-General, seeking independent valuations that resulted in cuts ranging up to 78 per cent. One owner in Clare had a valuation reduced from $950,000 to $210,000. The figures were only released after a Freedom of Information request by Family First MLC Robert Brokenshire, who has questioned the valuation of some country properties based on local property sales figures over the past year. "This is a very inadequate system because the values can bounce around based on very few sales, like the farmer paying a very high price for the paddock he has always wanted," he said. A proper valuation takes about a day to do and with more than 800,000 each year, the Valuer-General's office can only spend a few minutes on each. One property owner appealed against a valuation of $555,000 and it was reduced to $400,000 - meaning the council rates would be around $400 less. In another example, a Clare owner had the value of a property reduced from $1,175,000 to $1,050,000 - with a subsequent saving of $511 in government levies and other charges. State Government charges that are all or partly based on property values are Land Tax, Regional Natural Resources Management Levy, SA Water bills, and the Emergency Services Levy. In Keswick, one commercial property owner had a valuation cut from $3,625,000 to $2,470,000 on appeal. The saving on Land Tax alone on such a property would be about $40,000. Former Valuer-General and now Independent MLC John Darley said those who owned property in a grape-growing region should challenge their valuations at the moment because land value was dropping. "They (the valuers) generally get it right because there are around 880,000 valuations each year but some of these over-valuations can make a very big difference to rates and other charges," he said. However, a spokesman for the Valuer-General said the challenges represented only a very small percentage of the total number of valuations conducted. Property Council SA executive director Nathan Paine said incorrect valuations could make a significant difference for many owners of small commercial property, especially in the calculation of Land Tax. "Part of the problem with commercial property values is that one or two purchases in an area in which a big company pays over the odds to consolidate land for a development can skew the figures," he said. Even though the company paid much more to create a site for a shopping centre, the value of the other properties on paper goes up. If you are paying Land Tax at 3.7 per cent of the property, it can make a massive difference. The owner who appealed against the valuation of $950,000 and had it changed to $210,000 would have wiped out their $8246 Land Tax bill to nothing. That is because they were below the threshold for such a charge.