Assessments

We recently had a significant victory in a large tax appeal case in Allegheny County, PA.  The property included 2 office buildings that were being transitioned from a single tenant to a multi-tenant property. There were 2 years under appeal and, prior to our challenge, the assessed fair market value was $49 million.  Our appraised

Fox Rothschild has filed a class action on behalf of the owners of approximately 1,240 properties located in Philadelphia challenging recent legislation which “adopts” an artificially high Established Predetermined Ratio (EPR) for the 2013 tax year. Significantly, while the legislation expressly recognizes that real estate tax assessment in the City has become “increasingly at variance

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ bipartisan House Select Committee on Property Tax Reform held two days of hearings in Harrisburg to review local government property tax collection, reassessments and local tax structures. The committee is conducting a review of Pennsylvania’s local tax structure. According to an article in PA Law Weekly, State Representative Tom Quigley

In Greth Development v. Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals, the Berks County trial court considered whether the tax assessment of individual lots of a residential subdivision should take into account “ongoing subdivision concerns, including cash flow, absorption rate of lot sales, and ongoing expenses.” The case involved a residential subdivision in which 25 lots

Lehigh County has extended the deadline for filing informal reassessment challenges. The revised deadline is Thursday, March 22. Informal reviews give property owners the chance to sit down with an assessor and dispute the record. They can be requested online, in person, over the phone or by mail. More than 10,000 challenges were filed as

The Philadelphia’s Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT) recently decided to apply the County of Philadelphia Common Level Ratio (CLR)–which had been reduced by Pennsylvania’s State Tax Equalization Board (STEB) from 32 percent to 18.1 percent–to property values as certified by the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Property Assessment (OPA). Our firm filed a Petition

A Philadelphia judge recently dismissed a challenge by a group of Philadelphia taxpayers challenging the city’s tax assessment practices. The suit alleged that properties were “over assessed” due to alleged illegal and unconstitutional City Property Tax practices. The complaint took issue with the citywide moratorium on property tax reassessments that went into effect in January

The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently decided a tax assessment appeal involving a 486,086 square foot industrial facility in Erie County. The Court considered a number of important issues including:

1. Whether the taxpayer’s appraiser utilized a “value-in-use” methodology?
2. Whether the Court was entitled to split the difference between the appraiser’s values?
3. Whether the

The deadlines to file a real estate tax assessment appeal are right around the corner. Below are some of the deadlines for Pennsylvania counties:

Philadelphia October 3 (first Monday in October)
Berks August 15
Bucks August 1
Chester August 1
Dauphin August 1
Delaware August 1
Lackawanna September 1
Lancaster August 1
Lehigh August 1