It's a pretty common way to tax property. All a town or county is looking for is a somewhat equitable way to split up the bill for the total tax income it want

It's a pretty common way to tax property. All a town or county is looking for is a somewhat equitable way to split up the bill for the total tax income it wants to collect each year. All that matters is that every property's relative value is reasonably fairly assessed, and the tax rate is then set based on the amount of funds the local government budgets, with the portion each household pays being weighted based on assessed value. All that happens if an individual homeowner argues down their appraisal is that everybody else's taxes go up by a bit. If everybody successfully argued their house was 10% overvalued, all the assessments would go down, the tax rate would go up, and they'd all be right back where they started for tax bills.