Anchorage wants to speed up its check on 570 questionable tax exemptions

Churches, nonprofits and other owners of fully tax-exempt Anchorage property would have 90 days to answer a certification request, instead of waiting for the next March 15 deadline, under a change the Property Appraisal Division is asking the Assembly to make. It applies only to renewing exemptions already granted; new applicants still face March 15.

The point is speed. The division is working through roughly 570 flagged tax-exempt properties, a review that would take until late 2031 or early 2032 at current staffing. Spreading the certification work across the year, paired with more audit capacity, would move that finish line up to about 2030.

At stake is about $811,000 a year, roughly 0.12 percent of Anchorage's 2026 property tax revenue. That figure is what the city could collect going forward if improperly exempted property were put back on the taxable roll; the division cautions that recovering money for past years would be far more limited and case-by-case. Anchorage carries 813 nonprofit religious, charitable, cemetery, hospital and educational properties worth $1.56 billion in exempt value, plus nearly 3,000 government parcels worth $5.75 billion.

The current system jams all the work into spring. Certifications are tied to March 15 and determinations generally have to be done by May 15 for tax billing, and most applicants wait until the deadline. The division took nearly 2,000 appeals and more than 4,000 exemption applications in 2026, while dedicating about half of one position to exemption audits.

The division also wants to stop reviewing every exemption on the same clock. Higher-risk exemptions would be audited every three years, use-based ones every six, and government-owned property would get an annual systematic check rather than a fixed audit cycle unless something flags a problem.

"This approach would distribute responses more evenly throughout the year, reduce unnecessary follow-up, improve response timeliness, reduce avoidable hardship and appeals, and allow the Division to use its available review capacity more effectively," wrote Municipal Assessor Jack Gadamus.

Anchorage has gone back and forth on this before. The code was amended in 2009 to require annual certification for those nonprofit exemptions, then amended again in 2011 to make it discretionary, after the city and nonprofits, especially smaller ones, found the mandate burdensome.