When China decided to impose a national property tax, the future assessors were sent to Maryland to find out how to do it right.

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In Maryland it's the state's responsibility to assess property, and the state assessors have an error rate that is four times lower than the average county in Pennsylvania.

"We are not the people who get the majority of the money so we take the politics out of it," said Laura Foussekis, of the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation.

It wasn't always that way.

Up until the 1970s, Maryland had an assessing system that was even more confusing than Pennsylvania's. During the first part of the 20th century Maryland had property assessors at both the county and the municipal levels. A homeowner might have had one value set by the county and another set by the town, which meant paying taxes based on each of those values.

By the early 1970s, it was apparent there were "huge problems" in the assessment system, Mrs. Foussekis said.

Counties weren't reassessing regularly. Some were granting property tax exemptions that were not legal, which meant some counties received more than their share of state aid, because they appeared poorer than they were.

In 1972, Gov. Marvin Mandel pushed through an initiative to take over assessments from the local authorities.

Mrs. Foussekis said it wasn't hard to take the responsibility of assessing away from the local authorities once they found out that the state would also take over paying for the assessments.

The takeover of the assessment system was phased in from 1972 through 1975.

Maryland law now calls for each of the 33.2 million properties there to be reassessed every three years. The Department of Taxation and Assessments tends to assess about 700,000 a year, which is a third of all properties and any that have had construction or major changes that could affect the property value. Mrs. Foussekis said the state assessors have an appeal rate of about 4 percent.

The state system calls for new values to be phased in over three years.

Some counties in Maryland have chosen to protect homeowners from rising assessments that cause their taxes to jump by limiting how much a value can rise from one assessment. The counties, which also run schools in Maryland, charge an average property tax of about $1 for every hundred dollars in value.

What that means is that properties are still assessed by the state at market value but the counties can choose to ignore increased assessments when factoring local property taxes.

However, Mrs. Foussekis said, the state still has accurate records of property values so that exemptions are granted by state taxation officers instead of local officials, and the state aid is parceled out on the current values of the property in that county.

"We take the mandate that we are supposed to be putting market values on property very seriously," Mrs. Foussekis said.

The effort shows. When assessments are compared to sales, the state assessors are usually within 10 percent, which is the standard set by the International Association of Assessing Officers. The state of Maryland has a better track record than every one of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania.