Filing Your St. Louis County Personal Property Tax Declaration

SAINT LOUIS COUNTY MISSOURI

ASSESSOR’S OFFICE

41 South Central Avenue

St. Louis, Missouri 63105-1777

314-615-1500

 

Do you own a small business in Missouri?  Are you filing a Schedule C with your 1040 tax return?  Or do you have a partnership or corporation?  If yes, then you’re supposed to pay personal property taxes on your equipment.

 

I keep getting asked:  Do I have to pay personal property taxes?  Do I have to fill out that form?  If you own a small business, the answer is yes.

 

I used to think that if you didn’t have any assets, you didn’t have to do a business personal property declaration.  But—even if you have absolutely no business assets at all, you’re going to have a minimum assessed value of business property for tax purposes of $200.  That’s not what the tax is, that’s an assessed value of your property.

 

So how does that assessment thing work?  I’ll use my own business as an example.  In 2013, I bought new computer equipment.  The total cost was around $3,000.  Computers count as “5-year” property, because that’s how long it takes to depreciate a computer on your tax return.  (Office furniture is an example of a 7-year property.)  Now I’m writing off the whole cost of the computer on my tax return (as a Section 179 expense)—but it’s still considered a 5 year property for depreciation purposes and for the personal property tax declaration.

 

In the personal property tax declaration form, I would put $3000 for year 2013 in schedule 9 for 5-year property.  (If your brain just exploded reading that, relax, I’m going to give you the easy cheater way to do the form in a little bit.)

 

Then that amount (in my case $3,000) is multiplied by .85 and then multiplied by .3333 so my assessed value is $849.92.   That’s not the tax I’m going to pay, that’s just the assessment of the value of what my business owns.  (3000 x .85 x .3333 = 849.915)

 

Last year, the tax rate was 8.052.  I only had $230 of assessed value so my bill was only $18.52 this past December.  Because of my new equipment, my bill will be higher this year.  But your bill is going to be close to 8% of what the assessed value of your equipment it.  As your equipment ages, the assessment will go down but the assessment will never go below $200.

 

So what’s the cheater trick for filling out the form?  Grab your tax return and pull out the Federal depreciation schedule.  It’s going to have a list of your company assets, what they cost, and whether they are a 5-year, 7-year, or a 10-year property, and what year you bought them.  If you have company assets like computers, equipment, or vehicles, then you should have a depreciation schedule to go with your tax return.  I know that some companies won’t give that list to their clients to force them to come back every year.  If you’re not getting that list—you have a right to ask for it.  (And move to a preparer that gives you all the information you need for your taxes.)

 

If you didn’t get your personal property tax declaration statement in the mail, here’s a link so you can have the form:

http://www.stlouisco.com/Portals/8/docs/document%20library/Assessor/pp/BusAndMfgDecForm_WebCopy.pdf

 

You need to have it signed and filed by March 31st.

 

St. Louis County has started a new Online Personal Property Declaration that will be available from February 1 – April 30thhttp://revenue.stlouisco.com/Collection/ppInfo/ppDec.aspx It’s a good option for people who missed the March 31 deadline and for people who are just more comfortable with on-line services.  If you start using the online service, you’ll be able to access your previously filed returns, making it a whole lot easier to fill out that form in the future!

 

If you’ve been forgetting to file your St Louis County personal property taxes, 2014 is a good year to come clean and start filing.