Parker Poe's active ad valorem property tax practice extends throughout the United States. The Firm provides advice and counsel to clients on a wide range of property tax issues, including exemption cases and assessment appeals. Our clients include both local governments as well as taxpayers such as office building owners, manufacturers and specialty property owners.

Experience Highlights

We have developed extensive experience in property tax hearings and appeals, including the following:

• Assessment of both real and business personal property
• Schedules of values and their application to property
• Exemption of property from ad valorem taxation
• Present use valuation

Our experience extends from appearances before local boards of equalization and review to litigation of appeals before the property tax commissions in various states. We have also handled property tax cases in the appellate courts in states including Indiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Property tax decisions can have a lasting impact on monies owed by a business or collected by a local government, because a decision in one year normally sets a precedent for several years. Many of our cases have involved more than $1 million in tax liability.

Experience

• Negotiated a reduction of more than $40 million in the assessment of a major sports complex. The complex is located on several tracts of land. The county valued the tracts at an amount that was 117% greater than the previous assessment. We persuaded the county that it had incorrectly valued the tracts as separate parcels when their use was dependent upon the use of the other parcels.
• Obtained a reduction of more than $4 million in a county's assessment of a client's manufacturing facility. The North Carolina Machinery Act requires counties to reappraise property every eight years. Totaled over the eight-year period of the reappraisal, the value of this reduction was $32 million.
• Negotiated and obtained judicial approval of a settlement in the State of Indiana that resolved years of property tax appeals and included $44 million to be paid to our local government client and an agreement by the taxpayer to invest $150 million at its facility for the next four years.
• Represented an eastern North Carolina county in a case where the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the Property Tax Commission's decision that the taxpayer failed to file its property tax returns properly for 1996-2001. The taxes, penalties and interest that the Court ordered the taxpayer to pay equal about $1 million per year for our local government client for each of the next six years.