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December 07, 2005
Tax Assessors Using Google Earth
Someone just told me an interesting story which happened to a friend of his. His friend got a call from a tax assessor asking him to pay property taxes and fines. His friend contacted the assessor and they produced photos of his property showing where he had built new structures on his property without permits or reporting a change in value to his property. Where did the photos come from? Google Earth!
So, I guess there are other avenues of doing business with Google Earth I hadn't considered. However, before people get too upset at Google about this. Please consider that most counties and state governments already have access to aerial photography through state-run GIS systems if they choose to use it. Google Earth might be a bit easier to use though. The new ArcGIS Explorer browser ESRI is planning to release next January will make it even easier for tax assessors to spot property tax violations since it works in tangent with GIS databases.
Posted by FrankTaylor at December 7, 2005 12:34 PM
Comments
Posted by: DeafScribe at December 7, 2005 01:43 PM
ESRI won't be charging people $400 do use their software in a commercial way.
Jilly.
Posted by: Jill Madson at December 7, 2005 04:22 PM
Since the mid 90's the European Union has been using remote sensing satellites to track, amongst other things, acreage of land used for some 500 million olive trees. Subsidies to the farmers are based on the number of trees and some farmers were perhaps overestimating.
Posted by: eejit at December 8, 2005 04:10 PM
That's great. Google earth will now help tax collectors collect taxes more conveniently. Happy tax collection with google earth lol
Posted by: John at September 12, 2006 12:58 PM
This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's a cheap way for local assessors to verify the veracity of property tax payers, and the OP is right... it's a fairly common practice to use aerial photos the same way. I don't think it's unreasonable to go after property owners for failing to declare whole structures.
Posted by: Kenny Marshall at April 7, 2008 06:28 PM
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Maybe it's time to start building underground!