Assessment Review & Appeal

To assist you further with navigating your property tax assessment review and appeal, our proprietary software solution, PT Analytics, gives you access to real-time status reports of your property tax portfolio – all in one place.

Here, you can get progress updates on the engagement along with any other property tax information, including:

• Detailed information on each individual property
• Current and historical context of values and tax liabilities
• Assigned DMA property tax team contact information
• Appropriate tax jurisdictions and their corresponding contact information
• Activity related to our negotiations and appeals

In addition, we provide access to all the documents and data collected or created during the process. PT Analytics allows you to create and save custom searches for your unique portfolio, easily create PDF reports for each individual property, and export all raw data for your specific reporting needs.

Our Strategic Valuation Services manage the property tax valuation for your property’s entire lifecycle—including forecasting, planning, tax minimization, strategies, and complete compliance outsourcing. This includes unitary valuation services for centralized assets and business enterprise valuation for complex properties as well.

To start, the Strategic Valuation Services team examines a wide range of factors that impact value at the macro level, such as:

• Regulatory changes
• Applicable case law
• National and global economic trends

Then, our experienced team considers the cost, income, and sales comparison approaches to value and identifies all forms of obsolescence. Next, we determine an appropriate basis for assessment. And finally, we work proactively with the appropriate taxing authorities to manage end of useful life strategies, including plant closures, depletion of mineral reserves, and more.

The role of DMA’s Strategic Valuation Services team is to provide you with recommendations of valid issues that are worth pursuing and to guide you through the implementation of the agreed-upon action plan.

Canadian provincial legislation requires companies to submit a property assessment compliance report to the assessing authority that details construction project costs. This report then forms the basis for future property assessments and taxation. Fortunately, DMA’s Construction Cost Reporting service does the heavy lifting for you.

Our tax professionals come from both the assessment and construction industries. Because of our team’s unique experience, we conduct a thorough analysis of your construction costs and prepare a comprehensive property assessment compliance report.

DMA’s construction cost reports can serve as a basis for all future valuations, so assessment valuation adjustments can be more accurate when facility modifications occur. The reports also serve as a powerful reference tool should any changes to assessment legislation occur.

Ontario companies are faced with complex tax calculations related to municipal capping and clawback legislation. Fortunately, DMA provides Tax Bill Analysis services to ensure your property taxes are fair and accurate.

Our Tax Bill Analysis service includes an analysis of pertinent tax documents and a review of all cap and clawback calculations. We also analyze new construction and new-to-class guidelines. With your approval, our professionals pursue tax savings and discuss revised calculations with municipal officials on your behalf. Tax Bill Analysis can be provided as a stand-alone service based on your specific needs or in conjunction with DMA’s Property Tax Assessment Review & Appeal service.

Tax Recovery focuses on identifying real and personal property tax refund opportunities by analyzing assessments from prior years. Real and personal property taxes paid in prior years are often recoverable when assessment errors or valuation issues can be applied retrospectively. Our experienced property tax recovery professionals review the data upon which the assessments were based. We identify things such as:

• Taxpayer and assessor errors
• Alternative valuation approaches
• Overlooked exemptions

Following our analysis, we provide you with a detailed report identifying potential refund opportunities. We also include a strategic plan that outlines all necessary support. As your property tax partner, we file refund claims with the local taxing authorities and monitor the claims until we’ve secured all the refunds for you.

DMA’s Inventory Analysis provides a customized review of your stock of finished goods, work-in-process, raw materials, and supplies to determine if any tax exemptions may apply. We focus on establishing the correct range of value for inventory accounts.

We begin the process by collecting tax notices and tax bills for all inventory accounts. The values are then reconciled to the book inventory. Our team analyzes discrepancies found and any additional information regarding the inventory, such as:

• Location
• Type
• Appropriate trade level
• Industry specifics
• Accounting
• Current supply and demand economic factors

Once all the information is gathered, we determine if the inventory is properly valued and if all exemptions are accounted for. We then create a report that explains our findings and provides recommended solutions. Finally, we pursue exemption-based savings or valuation arguments with taxing authorities on your behalf.

DMA’s Leased Equipment Analysis helps you, as a lessor or a lessee, reduce the taxable value on leased property.

As a lessee, we ensure you are not overpaying the property tax expense included in the lease price charged by a lessor. In these instances, our analysis focuses on a review of leased property and the tax expense associated with that property. This also includes a review of lease agreements and appropriate invoices. Our property tax professionals determine a suggested taxable value for the property, which is compared to what the lessor charged. We report our findings and obtain your approval to pursue tax savings with lessors and/or tax jurisdictions where appropriate.

For lessors, we help reduce your leased property values and can assist you with your property tax compliance function.

DMA’s Pollution Control Analysis ensures you are taking full advantage of any pollution control exemptions for property tax purposes. Doing so can help decrease your taxable property values and reduce your effective tax rate.

Our team possesses jurisdiction-specific expertise along with knowledge of specific pollution control exemptions. We review your fixed asset register, descriptions, and asset appropriation justifications to identify qualifying projects and equipment. In addition, we interview your key facility personnel and tour facilities to thoroughly understand the process and the nature of the property. We then document the qualifying property, complete all necessary paperwork, and file the exemptions with the appropriate tax jurisdiction on your behalf—ensuring that the exemption is secured.

When the process is complete, our property tax experts provide a pollution control analysis report documenting our findings and results so you can apply the appropriate exemptions for your property in the future.