Commercial real estate taxes are a burden felt by nearly all companies. Regardless of whether a company owns its facilities, leases space or is a commercial landlord, chances are that real estate taxes account for a significant portion of operating expenses that can materially impact profitability and working capital. Often property owners aren’t properly equipped to assess whether they’re overpaying real estate taxes. This process requires dedicated resources with knowledge of the jurisdiction and access to the proper data. Additionally, tenants are often unaware that they may have the legal authority to challenge commercial real estate assessments.
In today’s environment, proactively monitoring expenses including real estate taxes is extremely important. However, managing the process of valuing your properties, filing appeals and budgeting can be time consuming and complex.
Clearview Group’s dedicated real estate tax professionals have decades of experience helping property owners and tenants navigate the real estate appeal process in order to achieve tax savings. Our service offerings are designed to achieve current and future real estate tax reductions:
Our State & Local Tax experts will review your assessment and gain an understanding of the appraisal techniques used by the assessor. We will then conduct our own analysis of value and build a case for why the jurisdiction’s assessment is overstated. We’ll present our case to the jurisdiction and work with the Assessor or Appeals Board to secure the requested reductions if any overpayments are identified. Since Clearview Group’s Real Property Tax Assessment Appeals operate on a contingent fee basis, if we don’t identify financial results, there is no cost to you.
Assessors have very little time to calculate assessments for many properties. Some jurisdictions require property owners to respond to income questionnaires, which are used by assessors to calculate an assessed value of the property. These questionnaires are typically general in nature and don’t specifically address factors that could impact the value of your specific property. For this reason, we like to review our Client’s response to these questionnaires and assist them by providing data to steer the assessor to the precise valuation conclusions we deem appropriate.
Clearview’s State & Local Tax team is also equipped to aid with pre-acquisition analysis and calculate tax projections for use in making purchasing decisions.
Clearview Group’s State & Local Tax Team achieved a significant reduction in the taxable value for a Class A suburban office by building a market value argument against an earlier sale of the property. Our approach was to first identify that a sale/leaseback was a financial transaction and then put forth a strong market valuation and equity in assessment argument, thereby reducing the proposed assessed value by 30% and producing three-year tax savings of approximately $400,000.
For more information regarding Real Property Tax service offerings, contact Clearview Group.
We are a full-service management consulting and CPA firm covering all aspects of audit, compliance, risk management, accounting, finance, tax, IT risk, and more. Just let us know what you need help with and an expert will be in touch!
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