Never,ever,let anyone from the government into your home. Make them obtain a warrant no matter how nice they appear. We recently had employees from our city building codes department doing random inspections on out buildings looking for illegal power/water supply. My neighbor opened the door and the guy barged his way onto his property and cut the power to his shed without showing any authority to do so. Then he received a fine in the mail on top of that!
The county appraiser came out for the once every four years snoop of my just deceased mother.
She offered her opinion on how it isn’t right for single people to be “living in these big homes all alone and then leaving them empty. There are lots of people who would like to live here.” I bit my tongue off because they push the pencil. The busy bodies, most are women, drive up and start looking around, one headed for the barn door and I told her there is a vicious dog in there and she did not need to go in.
I don’t want these people knowing what is in my barn for the simple reason that too many of them are not exactly from families or associations that are the epitome of virtue. Some case the place looking for something someone can steal.
They don’t need in the house or in the barn. Most counties do the tax survey from aerials leaving it to the homeowner to protest through a somewhat efficient channel.