Our Services
Business Personal Property taxes are a significant operating expense incurred by many businesses. It is becoming more prevalent for aggressive assessors to over assess reported assets. Mitigating provisions available to taxpayers include studies surrounding asset reclassifications, proper recognition of physical, functional and economic obsolescence and the identification of assets that are considered exempt or inappropriate under prevailing statutes. We provide a comprehensive methodology pertaining to the appeals process.
Personal Property Assessment Reviews
We have adopted the following procedures when performing an evaluation of your business’s assessed tangible personal property, to properly identify and qualify areas of opportunity to reduce your overall tax burden:
- Conduct an on-site inspection of the business’s operation as it pertains to the functionality of the subject personal property
- Gather all relevant financial documentation to perform a reconciliation between the taxpayer’s fixed asset detail ledger and their reported property tax declaration
- Review the county’s guidelines to properly ascertain asset classifications
- Review the taxpayer’s operating assets with respect to fair market valuation as it surrounds the concepts of physical, functional and economic obsolescence
- Review all empirical documentation on reported fixtures to properly identify and qualify any assessments that may be overvalued or illegal tax by law
- Review and apply all relevant codes, regulations, annotations and court decisions to the assessment under review
Mandatory Audits
Audits that are conducted by the various counties, inherently present the taxpayer’s with the opportunity to “look back” to the previous four years and review whether or not the assessments for those years were properly stated by law. This allows the taxpayer to adopt our philosophies outlined above, and identify and mitigate any over-payments that may qualify for a tax refund.
Appeal Representation
We represent the taxpayer in all aspects of the appeal process which includes:
- Maximizing all informal negotiation opportunities with respective counties in the effort to avoid an unnecessary appeal process
- Case preparation, along with expert testimony, gathered to effectively represent the taxpayer before the assessment appeals board
