Property Tax Appeal of an Audit
A Property Tax Case Study
The Case
After handling a property tax audit internally, a company called us for help. The Assessor issued an escape assessment and the resulting tax bills were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Desperate to have the problem fixed, and realizing their own limitations, they called us to step in and resolve the issue. We were engaged to fix the problem through the audit appeal process.
Our first priority was to make sure the appeals were timely filed. Once this was done we went to work recreating the audit to see where it went wrong. After a careful review, it was determined that the Auditor had made several errors during the audit process. We reached out to the Auditor and worked closely with the client and the Auditor to clarify the errors the Auditor made and provide the correct back up for the Auditor.
Results:
Utilizing the correct Revenue and Taxation code, property tax rules and procedures, we were able to extend the appeal time in order to resolve the clients issues. We put together our own audit findings and presented them in a clear and concise manner to the Assessor’s office with detail backup. Ultimately we were able to resolve 99% of the escape assessments and without having to present in front of the formal appeals board.
Over the course of the appeal process the exclusion of the audit escapes were so significant that we were able to save the company money and time. In fact the savings were so significant that it even paid for our services. Our client was so happy with our work, they hired us to manage all of the property tax needs throughout the U.S.
They are still a client today!
