First thing is that your lease bonus and all royalty income on property in WV is source income to WV, and you should be filing a WV non-resident income tax return in any year you received WV income. It is your responsibility to file a tax return for WV.
Second, in regards to real estate taxes, your first mineral real estate tax bill you will get will be in August 2027 (if production did not start until 2025).
Depending on the county, some counties in WV tax nonproducing mineral interests and some don’t. And, you will get a tax bill, as you said, in the time frame you listed IF you are on the taxes. If the mineral interest is still in Grandpa’s name and a cousin is getting the bill, the cousin will get a big increase in 2 years. Messy and complicated as this is, people should make the effort to understand all this and try to get the tax bill in the correct name. Worth a call to the county Assessor’s office to start the conversation if not already on a tax ticket although the straightening out needs to be done through the county clerk at least in the counties I know about.
Thanks. I’m not a tax evader and I pay my share when I have to. The wells did not produce till 2025 in wetzel county and they are not drilled yet in Tyler. The lease bonus was for both tracts in 2024. I paid a DC and federal tax on the bonus as regular income. But I’ll call the assessor office in each county to find out more.
If you find the need or interest to learn how to work with the Tyler County documents, ask. It is somewhat the same as Wetzel but their Vault is rather different. They also have the Land Books online and that can be a help (where, every year, all owners of land and later also oil and gas were listed, for purposes of taxing).
I don’t think the assessor offices will help with the WV state income tax. If you research, I think you will find you need to file a 2024 WV Non-resident tax return for the signing bonus income. Probably with some late fees being due now. Then you should likely amend your DC tax return to reflect the payment to WV. DC should refund you the taxes you paid on the WV income.
True about WV State Income tax. I was talking about the county property tax situation. I know people who have lost their inherited rights because they didn’t pay property tax that was not appropriately kept up with. The producer notifies the WV State tax dept about royalties paid per owner per well. The WV State Tax dept notifies the county assessor’s offices with this information. At the county level, they don’t necessarily have a way to deal with this, for multiple owners, when the tax ticket was never split from decades ago. And it is up to the owners to do this or hire it done. Etc. As you said, the income tax situation is different.
So you’re saying the mineral rights have a property tax on them? That’s in addition to the actual property tax on the surface owner? I don’t recall my mother or other co owners paying any property tax on the mineral rights, over the time they owned the rights.
Yes. When the wells start to produce. The production levels are sent to the state, which then send it to the counties. The counties then tax you on the production.
Yes, there are two. You and Owner each pay a property tax.
Actually there should have been a very minimal tax annually before production. Someone else must have been paying it if your Mother wasn”t.
Well, both tracts have multiple rights owners. I’m sure then the counties will track me down and send the bill divided among the rights owners. Are they typically mailed out? So I’ll get a bill for this year sometime in February 2026? Or do they get sent out at the end of the year?
In some counties in WV they only start taxing “severed” (when surface is sold and the minerals are retained) minerals when they start producing (when it has been reported to the State by the producer then to the county. In some counties they start taxing when the minerals are severed, starting separate tax listings for the surface and for the minerals. Sometimes they don’t separate them at the assessor’s office when severed (by mistake) and the surface owner pays everything. A different problem is when they are severed and “grandpa” keeps the minerals and gets a tax bill in his name. He gets old, dies without telling anybody to remember to pay the tax. The bill comes and is thrown away. Or grandpa’s address is not updated. Or grandpa had 10 children, one takes care of business like paying taxes then dies without telling. Etc. Eventually you might have 300 people who own an interest, when the oil and gas company comes to get leases and they have to sort it out. Etc.
The county won’t track you down. Maybe one of your relatives who is paying the tax now might track you down. Or not. What you don’t want is for nobody to pay the tax bill and it to get sold at a tax sale. There are ways to sort this out but the county won’t do it.
I’ll call the county assessors office and see what they tell me. I know the plat number so once I give them that they should be able to tell me, or they might have a website that lets me look it up online, as who gets the mineral rights tax bill.
So I called and yes, there is a two year delay on paying the tax to the county. Since there has been no production in that plat for maybe 50 years or so, the mineral rights tax must been minimal or it was paid by someone. I got my rights in 2021. They do not collect tax on the lease bonus I got in 2024.
If you mean by “plat number” the surface tract, they could give you at least 2 websites to use. An account (tax) that is just minerals will have a prefix for the district, then “9999” meaning minerals or at least not surface, then a (maybe) 8 digit number. A surface tract would have the prefix for district, then a number for the tax map then a number for the parcel number and maybe a suffix number for a parcel that has been subdivided, for the smaller part. I believe that you are going to have to dig a little more to get the full answer. People here can help if you want to learn. Or wait. If your great grandfather (I think this is where the inheritance starts) was paying a tax bill that somehow has been passed down and is still being paid by a cousin, that cousin will be hit by a giant leap in the tax bill in a couple of years.
I was on the wetzel county website and used the plat number to find the surface owner and what the tax was for that. But I was not able to find the same thing for the mineral rights. But she told me on the phone that Antero sends the info to them about well production along with my address and they use that to figure out the bill then send it out to the rights owners, I assume the total tax is divided up my the number of rights owners. Guess I’ll find out in two years.
It would be divided, however it is done, by the actual inherited amount. If Great Grandpa had 2 children, each would have 1/2 interest. If one was Grandpa, and he had 5 children, each would have 1/10 interest, and Great Aunt Sally, Grandpa’s sister, would have her 1/2 interest divided among her children. Maybe only 1 child, who would then have 1/2 interest while her cousins would each have 1/10. Etc. So not simply divided up. And, maybe Wetzel does it differently but the county I know most about would not divide it; the production as reported from the state would be put on the existing tax ticket, if it exists, and the family would be responsible for filing the paperwork to get it split from Great Grandpa to his heirs, then each branch would need to get split down to the current living heirs.
It’s complicated for sure. I’ll let the county figure it all out, and if I don’t like it I’ll file some sort of protest on what they say. Given how many wells they have to do this with, I’m guessing they will take a bit of time to figure it out. It’ll be their job not mine. The plat in Tyler has 48 people on the rights now that its been split many generations. I don’t know how many are in the one for Wetzel. Antero sent me a nice packet for the well planned in Tyler that lists all of the people in all of the plats that have interests that their drilling will touch. I don’t think I have that same document for Wetzel. So I’ll get my money each month and pay the bill when they send it to me.
I have mineral (gas and oil) interest in Wetzel Co. Antero sends production info to the WV tax dept and they forward that info to Wetzel Co. Your interest will be separated and Wetzel will bill you at your address of record your portion of the Wetzel Co mineral property tax in July of each year, but 2 years in arrears. you then pay the Wetzel Co Sheriff dept. directly for the mineral property taxes due.
Lease bonuses are handled separately as others have stated. File an out of state tax return to WV Using the 1099 info that Antero sends to you in the year the bonus(es)
Hopes this helps!
Clay McCaskey