If you’re a news-junkie with ink-stained fingers or um..carpal tunnel, you know the AJC has gone whole hog on evaluating tax assessments across the metro area and is reporting it’s findings in an in-depth series.

But the shocker being played up by the AJC, namely the widespread discrepancy of tax assessments to sales prices across much of the Atlanta metro area, doesn’t seem to shake out for ol’ 30030, according to the AJC’s zip code breakdown.

In fact, while Decatur’s sales value of homes increased nearly 10% from 2007 to 2008, tax assessments in the city went up only 3.6%.  Meanwhile, residents who filed tax returns requested a 19.2% drop in value.

So, according to this AJC analysis (story HERE, cool interactive map HERE), Decatur’s assessments aren’t currently that out of whack.  To see what a real problem looks like, take a gander at South DeKalb, or much of South Fulton, where sales value can be as much as 50% less than the property’s tax assessment.

As for the reason why assessments are so much higher than values, most across the Atlanta metro tax offices were pretty upfront with the AJC.  If assessments truly reflected current costs, local governments would go into a operational tailspin.

Is this reason enough to keep assessments up?  If you’re a city or county government unprepared to deal with massive services cuts or a political leader unwilling to propose a tax increase, probably so.  If you’re a homeowner struggling to make ends meet, probably not.