Property Tax Deadline
I thought it would be fitting to blog about property tax audits on the Utah deadline for real property tax appeals. We have identified quite a few problems this year with corporate real property tax assessments. One company was unaware that part of their land was useless and unable to be built on. Another company didn’t know that bad business can actually affect real property tax assessments.
Overestimating the value of property taxes by the state assessor is common, and it becomes more so in a down market. It is something psychological that when we see our property tax valuations go up, we are almost proud that our real estate is worth more, almost like we’ve made money off the assessment. In a down market, if our property tax valuations stay the same, we are almost relieved that our property value hasn’t tanked like you read in the news. In reality, your tax assessment doesn’t give you an accurate number of what someone would actually buy the property for. It only gives you the number of what you are taxed on. And that number, by law, is up for interpretation.
Likely you know more about your property than the assessor, and you definitely know more about your business than the assessor. That is why you need to have a property tax audit done at least every 3 years. It doesn’t cost you to have an expert look through your filings and determine if there were any overpayments and high assessment values. We have a former property tax judge on our staff, and I guarantee you that after an audit, you will be only paying what you have to in taxes, and most likely, it won’t be what they sent you in the mail.
