Retail & Restaurant

Property Tax

Retailers and restaurants often operate locations across numerous jurisdictions—each with its own set of valuation standards, assessment cycles, and tax risks. Without strategic oversight, these operations are frequently over-assessed, misclassified, or overlooked for appeal opportunities, especially in the case of leasehold improvements and tenant buildouts.

DMA helps retail and restaurant clients:

• Challenge excessive valuations and recover savings through our proven Assessment Review & Appeal process
• Navigate complex property types like distribution centers, grocery-anchored centers, and restaurant facilities
• Ensure accurate treatment of real property vs. leasehold vs. FF&E
• Plan for tax impacts during acquisitions, expansions, or remodels

For companies with large, distributed portfolios, DMA’s Property Tax Portfolio Management & Administration provides centralized oversight of property tax strategy, budgeting, assessment monitoring, and appeal coordination—delivering tax visibility and consistency across the brand.

Transaction Tax

Our team delivers analysis and tailored research on transaction tax issues to support your tax administration efforts. Our transaction tax experts ensure compliance with multi-jurisdictional tax laws, providing actionable insights and detailed guidance to address complex tax scenarios. We assist restaurants and retailers with challenges such as managing the high volume of low-dollar transactions, addressing taxability of mixed services and products, managing exemptions, and ensuring compliance with varying tax laws. Our team helps businesses optimize tax strategies and reduce risks, ensuring they remain compliant while minimizing tax liabilities.

Site Selection Service

Our site selection team helps companies find the best locations for new stores, restaurants, or franchises while maximizing available incentives. We assist with securing tax benefits for opening in high-demand areas, negotiating local tax incentives, and uncovering cost-savings opportunities tied to infrastructure development and job creation.

Income Tax

Through our alliance with GTM, DMA helps clients uncover tax savings, reduce exposure, and stay ahead of federal and state income tax regulations. Services include tax recovery, health checks, nexus studies, and minimization strategies to optimize tax positions and manage risks. A tailored approach ensures compliance while identifying opportunities for credits, incentives, and cost savings.

Fixed Asset Verification

Retailers and restaurants manage constantly evolving inventories of furniture, fixtures, and equipment across storefronts, kitchens, warehouses, and corporate offices. With frequent remodels, relocations, and asset retirements, fixed asset records can quickly become inaccurate—leading to overstated tax liabilities, audit risk, and depreciation errors.

DMA’s Asset Verification Service helps operators reconcile fixed asset ledgers by conducting on-site inspections, tagging, and classification audits to eliminate ghost assets, correct misstatements, and ensure reporting accuracy.

By aligning your asset records with both property tax and accounting requirements, DMA helps reduce unnecessary costs, improve audit readiness, and streamline capital planning across your portfolio.

Property Tax

Retail and restaurant companies—especially franchise groups and national brands—are frequently audited by taxing jurisdictions. Changes in store footprints, lease structures, or FF&E valuations can create inaccurate assessments, compliance gaps, or unexpected audit exposure.

DMA’s Property Tax Audit Management services help clients navigate audits efficiently and resolve disputes before they escalate, validate assessor data to ensure accurate treatment of tenant improvements and leasehold assets, and address inconsistent valuation methods across locations and taxing authorities.

Our team also conducts historical assessment reviews to identify and recover overpayments—often stemming from ghost assets, outdated valuations, or overlooked appeal opportunities. DMA ensures your tax obligations are accurate and fair across every site in your portfolio.

Transaction Tax

We identify and recover overpaid taxes while addressing inaccuracies and inefficiencies to mitigate future risk. Our comprehensive process provides detailed analysis, proactive solutions, and expert support to optimize recovery efforts and future compliance. We help retailers and restaurants recover overpaid taxes related to complex purchase transactions, sales of products, services, and mixed transactions. With high volumes of both small and large transactions, businesses in these industries often face taxability challenges that can lead to overpayments. We also provide robust audit support, assisting with audit preparation, managing inquiries from tax authorities, and ensuring proper documentation to reduce audit risks and prevent future liabilities. Our experts help businesses recover significant amounts while improving overall tax compliance.

Unclaimed Property Asset Recovery

We assist businesses in recovering unclaimed assets such as uncashed checks, vendor refunds, or insurance overpayments. With a proven track record of recovering dormant funds from over 400 government entities, we help businesses reclaim significant amounts, improving cash flow and overall financial health.

Income Tax

Through our alliance with GTM, DMA provides services that help recover overpaid federal and state income taxes and manage audits with confidence. Experts review tax filings to identify refund opportunities, oversee the recovery process, and support businesses through audits by communicating with auditors, resolving issues, and minimizing assessments.

Property Tax

For retail and restaurant groups managing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of locations across jurisdictions, property tax compliance is a massive administrative lift. Tracking due dates, filing returns, managing assessments, and paying tax bills becomes even more challenging with constant site turnover, remodels, and FF&E movement.

DMA’s Property Tax Compliance service provides accurate and timely real and personal property return preparation across all locations, centralized tracking of assessments, deadlines, and jurisdictional requirements; and full audit readiness, ensuring your records are clean and defensible.

Our Property Tax Portfolio Management & Administration service offers fully outsourced property tax operations—handling everything from assessment review and appeal coordination to bill receipt, review, and payment. DMA helps retailers and restaurants maintain compliance, reduce administrative burden, and gain visibility into tax obligations across their entire footprint.

Transaction Tax

Our transaction tax compliance service offers a complete solution for preparing and filing monthly transaction tax returns. With a US-based, centralized compliance center and a team of jurisdiction-specific experts, we ensure accurate, timely filings while acting as a seamless extension of your tax department. We manage the complexities of tax compliance related to the sale of goods, food and beverage services, and mixed transactions. We help restaurants and retailers navigate the intricacies of multi-jurisdictional tax laws, apply applicable exemptions, and ensure proper tax treatment of various services and products. Our services reduce the burden of compliance, allowing you to focus on your core business while maintaining accurate and timely tax filings.

Income Tax

Through our alliance with GTM, DMA offers services that simplify federal and state income tax compliance. From filings and nexus studies to voluntary disclosures, businesses receive targeted support to minimize liabilities and ease the burden on internal teams. These solutions help businesses stay compliant while focusing on growth.

Unclaimed Property

Our unclaimed property compliance service streamlines the reporting process. We manage everything from developing custom compliance schedules to handling state notices, ensuring accurate reporting and timely remittance. Partnering with us helps reduce audit risks, avoid penalties, and protect your reputation while ensuring full compliance with unclaimed property regulations.

The right technology and processes can transform your tax function, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and scalability. DMA’s tax technology team provides end-to-end solutions, including:

Tax Process Optimization and Automation

Our technology experts assess and enhance existing transaction tax systems to improve accuracy and streamline processes.

Tax Software Selection & Implementation

DMA helps businesses identify the best-fit transaction tax software solution and ensures seamless integration with existing systems. Our experienced team provides a comprehensive, unbiased evaluation, tailored implementation, and optimization to maximize the benefits of automation and align with your evolving business needs.

Exemption Certificate Management

We help clients automate the management of exemption certificates to reduce manual errors and ensure compliance.

Custom Software Solutions

Our experts design and implement tailored solutions to meet your tax requirements, including tools for data analysis, reporting, and automation.

Ongoing Maintenance and Enhancements

Keep your transaction tax technology systems optimized, scalable, and aligned with regulatory changes by utilizing DMA’s Managed Tax Services.

Unclaimed Property Automation

Our AUPTC unclaimed property software automates unclaimed property compliance for businesses. From tracking unclaimed property and conducting due diligence to processing refunds and generating reports, our solution simplifies workflows, enhances accuracy, and ensures timely compliance. Built-in reminders and notifications help you meet deadlines and reduce audit risks effortlessly.