A group of Cook County property owners have filed suit in Illinois federal court alleging that they are owed more than $27 million in property tax refunds due to discriminatory assessments by the County’s Treasurer and Assessor. These property owners claim they paid taxes at significantly higher levels than other taxpayers in the same class.
Assessments
Ohio Supreme Court Remands Lowe’s Tax Assessment Due To New Case Law
The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday vacated an Ohio Board of Tax Appeals decision affirming a county appraiser’s $8.8 million valuation of a Lowe’s Inc. property. The Court found, in a 4-3 decision, that new case law required reconsideration. These new cases established that comparable properties used to determine a property’s market value generally must…
NC Announces Assessment Reappraisal Counties
NC has announced that the following counties will begin the tax reassessment appraisal process of real properties in January 2018:
BEAUFORT COUNTY MITCHELL COUNTY
CLAY COUNTY ONSLOW COUNTY
FRANKLIN COUNTY ROBESON COUNTY
GRANVILLE COUNTY WATAUGA COUNTY
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NJ Adopts “Property Taxpayer Bill of Rights”
New Jersey has adopted a “property taxpayer bill of rights” seeking to assist property owners with the real estate assessment process. New Jersey has one of the nation’s highest property taxes. Bill A-4007 requires the state division of taxation director to list taxpayers’ real property rights “in simple and nontechnical terms” and post it…
Austin Loses Suit Alleging Undervalued Tax Appraisals
A Texas appellate court recently affirmed the dismissal of the city of Austin’s lawsuit claiming commercial and vacant property are being undervalued during property tax appraisals. Austin sued the Travis Central Appraisal District after an appraisal review board in Travis County denied the city’s formal challenge to what it said was the systematic undervaluation of…
NJ Property Taxes Cut $1.5M Under Freeze Act
A New Jersey tax court judge has granted a property owner’s request to reduce its tax assessment by about $1.5 million. The Court found that the taxes should have equaled a judgment entered two years earlier under the Freeze Act.
In Norwood Realty Associates v. Township of Ocean, Judge Mala Sundar approved the property owner’s…
Md. High Court Allows Post-Cutoff Tax Assessment Evidence
Maryland’s highest court recently held that the tax court can value a property by relying on sale prices of comparable properties bought soon after a cutoff date for the assessment. In Ann Lane v. Supervisor of Assessments of Montgomery County, the Maryland Court of Appeals concluded that the Maryland Tax Court had properly taken into…
Pa. Court Overturns $35M Reassessment
PA’s Commonwealth Court found that Fayette County waited to assess a property owned by Duke Energy Corp until a tax abatement ended instead of assessing it when Duke Energy upgraded the property because it lacked the money to conduct a proper assessment and wanted to wait until the property was taxable. The Court overturned a…
Tax Appeal Victory
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 Challenges Real Estate Tax Legislation
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…