Super Commercial Property Tax Appellant Loses Appeal - Will Fight On
Dozens of Moose Jaw commercial property owners have lost their joint appeal of their municipal property taxes to the City of Moose Jaw - Board of Revision.
The loss at the initial level of appeal may sting but the group has pledged to appeal the decision.
The case surrounds 97 commercial properties their owners claim were inappropriately assessed by the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA).
The group appealed their commercial property taxes assessments based upon what they see as unfairness in the assessment system used by SAMA.
Many of the group’s grounds for appeal were based upon SAMA’s underlying formulations and how the formula (nuts and bolts) was opaque and not transparent to the property taxpayer.
Other grounds for appeal questioned where and/or why the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) used data - especially sales - in classes (groups) the appellants did not agree with.
Appeal Basis
The individual appeal grounds are:
The Assessor has erred by refusing disclosure of relevant and consequential information required to adequately review the assessment.
The Assessor erred in its calculation and application of its income Moose Jaw sales’ time adjustment analysis
The Assessor erred by sales chasing and over-stratifying the Moose Jaw sales into groups that are not reflective of the Moose Jaw marketplace and do not establish meaningful groups for which to derive mass appraisal assessments.
The Assessor erred by using non-comparable sales, establishing incorrect historical assessment valuations (ASMT_SDB) and erred in its application of standard appraisal practice
The Assessor has failed to meet the market valuation standard (MVS) and has breached equity contrary to the provisions outlined in The Cities Act
The Assessor erred by trimming two additional sales from the group of 156 (148 CAPs)
In the event the RCM and exclusion of Sale IDs 2260464 and 1580927 are upheld, the Assessor erred by developing an inaccurate and inequitable Trim Analysis requiring the inclusion of two currently trimmed high CAPs or trim of two additional low CAPs to ensure equitable and reliable sales
There were other grounds for appeal that that applied to other single properties in the group which had additional objections raised.
Editor’s Note - Previous list is a breakdown of the reasons for the appeal to get a better lengthier one please refer to the appeals documents.
Business Side
Although they could not meet for this article due to work commitments a spokesperson for the Appellants released a brief statement to highlight some of their concerns.
The Appellants oppose SAMA’s use of 19 mini categories for a “broken model” business property tax as some only have one or two property sales to compare to making it unreliable.
Property sales of comparable properties are used by assessors to determine assessments for property tax purposes. The group wants a larger sample.
Another major concern for the local business property owners is what they see as inequitable property taxation in the province. Different municipalities have different assessment methodologies the group claims.
Transparency is a major concern for the businesses. SAMA has failed to provide the data to taxpayers that would allow them to verify the validity of their property taxes they claim.
Inflated assessments mean higher taxes, higher rents, and tighter margins for local businesses already facing economic challenges the group claimed.
SAMA’s Response
SAMA denied the claims by the Appellants group in the appeal documents.
SAMA asserted it had provided proper disclosure and transparency to the Appellants.
About sales data SAMA said they had provided a sufficient number for the appropriate classes.
On various concerns raised by the Appellant on the formula used by SAMA the assessor stated they used proper data in the correct manner.
In other areas where the formulas were used it was correct to do so but the Appellants misunderstood the formulas or the inputs.
“The Appellant concludes their rebuttal of this issue by presenting scatter plots showing CAP against sale year. CAPs reflect the relationship between income and sale price,” the appeal documents read where SAMA pointed out misunderstandings by the business property owners.
The Verdict
In the end the Board of Revision found in favour of the assessment agency on all points in the mass appeal.
One property owner was able to reach a deal with SAMA to move the property into a different property code and sub code.
In response to an email to release a political statement the Mayor’s office wrote back Mayor James Murdock was out of the office and unavailable until next week.
The fight against SAMA has been going on for many years as business property tax owners have targeted the City’s contracted assessment agency in an effort to achieve what they call “fair taxation.”
Business owners have been vocal in their calls to replace SAMA with a new property assessment agency they feel will be more fair and open in their work. One area they have fought on is reducing the number of business property categories which now are 19.