Multistate Personal Property Tax Overpayment Evaluation

If you’ve seen a property tax bill recently for your business, you might have wondered if your taxes are too high.

Well, your business sense is right on point. They probably are too high. We know because eighty percent of the time, our clients’ bills are incorrect. Some by as much as fifty percent!

With the rising burden of local personal property taxes for businesses, it is incumbent on a company to manage and control these costs through annual planning and examination. The challenge with personal property tax filing methods and computations are that they’re complicated. In most cases, it makes sense for significant property taxpayers, who want to implement an effective personal property tax management and reduction strategy, to partner with an experienced advocate that understands all elements of property taxation, including valuation, property accounting, and local protest procedural rules. These project leaders must be able to effectively bring together leaders from across functions of the corporation to develop and implement an effective strategy.

Our suggested review process includes several critical steps:

1. Assess preliminary personal property tax reduction opportunities.

2. Verify findings through interviews with operational personnel.

3. Implement findings through amendments.

4. Validate secured savings through property tax statement review.

Successful implementation of a personal property tax management program requires an adept project leader who can work with all the corporate decision-makers to gain a clear understanding of the company’s priorities and then conduct the research and then implement the plan.

Personal Property Tax Review: Planning Ahead of Upcoming Deadlines

Concurrent with finalizing a personal property tax review plan, it’s important to understand the jurisdictional requirements for challenging personal property assessments. All too often, companies start the process too late and as a result, they miss out on opportunities because they just get rushed.

In some cases, personal property tax assessments can be reduced through an amendment of the original filing and in other cases, the value is appealed within a timetable that is established with the assessor’s valuation notice of market value determination. Although the answer differs by state (and sometimes by jurisdiction as well), the lion’s share of the annual county and state personal property value protest periods are between March and August. Noteworthy is that some states allow a lookback period for certain errors that may also lend to a cash recovery of overpaid personal property taxes.

If an amendment or value appeal is not filed by the deadline, the opportunity to challenge the assessment will be missed so it’s incumbent on the business to be aware of jurisdictional rules for protest and amendment to avoid missing out on potential opportunities to save money. Therefore, the key for a successful result is to plan diligence to allow at least 3 months ahead of amendment/protest periods to uncover any overages well the corresponding filing or appeal deadlines.

How JM Tax Advocates Can Help

Think of your assessed value as an opening offer – you need a property tax advocate to handle the appeals process to negotiate a tax bill that makes sense. We’ll take the whole project over on a contingent fee basis – and chances are, we’ll come back with significant savings for your company.

Feel free to contact us today to execute your business plan for personal property tax reductions. If you have questions about Indiana property tax evaluations, click here.