Ralph Baker, the former Spokane County assessor, says he's made it his business to help people understand the property tax system, including educating them about filing appeals.

Baker says he has founded the American Property Tax Institute LLC, an online clearinghouse for property-tax information, because he had found during his six years as county assessor that most property owners didn't know how the Washington state tax system works. Many property owners also were unaware they might qualify for certain exemptions and tax-relief programs, he says.

"The whole idea sprung out of being assessor," Baker says.

The current assessor, Vicki Horton, defeated Baker, her former boss, last year in the general election.

Through the website AmericanPropertyTaxInstitute.com, Baker is marketing seven property tax booklets he compiled, including "A Citizen's Guide to Washington Property Taxes," "Property Tax Assessment Appeal Kit," and "A Business Owner's Guide to Washington Personal Property Taxes."

Other booklets cover specific tax-relief programs, such as the senior and disabled property-tax exemptions, and farming, timberland, and conservation-related exemptions.

The booklets each cost $7 to download or $10 for hard copies by mail.

The American Property Tax Institute also maintains an online property-tax resource center on its website. The site is designed to make it easy to find commonly used forms and property-tax related information at one online location. Baker says he would have found such resources helpful to taxpayers when he was assessor.

"The state requires assessors to educate people about these concepts, but there's no money to do that," he says.

The institute also is planning to offer professional-education courses to help attorneys, certified public accountants, real estate professionals, and investment advisers assist their clients with property tax issues, Baker says.

For now, American Tax Institute doesn't have any employees other than Baker, but he says he hopes to hire Kevin Best, his former chief deputy assessor, to help with educational courses.

While much of the information that's available through the institute's website also can be obtained directly through government sources, Baker says he would challenge someone to find appeal forms online through their assessors' offices.

"It's also very difficult to find where you actually file the forms," he says.

With recent declines in fair market value of many Washington residences, assessors might not be keeping pace, leading to errors in appraisals and resulting in higher tax assessments than property owners should have to pay, Baker says.

"Citizens should not simply accept their assessor's opinion of the value of their property," he says. "Filing a property tax appeal is free, and, if nothing else, requires the assessor to provide the property owner with information used to value his or her property."

While historically only about 3 percent of appeals here have been successful at hearings, about 20 percent are adjusted to some degree before they get to a hearing, Baker says.

The institute isn't meant to focus on Spokane County properties, but will start as a clearinghouse for statewide property tax issues, Baker says. He plans on expanding services to include other states, starting with Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.

"I've lived in those states, and they have similar property tax systems to Washington," Baker says.