The worst defense an appraiser can make is asking a taxpayer to accept financial liability based on the appraiser’s years of experience or familiarity with a subject and not providing reliable support for their opinion of value.
Industrial Valuation Services recently presented a value appeal before a state tax commission and successfully argued before an administrative judge that the lack of evidence presented by the county assessor was nothing more than a logical fallacy known in appraisal theory as Ipse Dixit. And yes, we could have just stated that the county assessor was simply making an unsupported opinion of Fair Market Value but understanding and recognizing that this type of argument has a name seemed to grab the judge’s attention. What is Ipse Dixit, nothing more than someone wanting you to believe something is true because they said it was true with no other evidence.
As in most appeals, the burden of proof falls on the taxpayer to show that an appraised value is incorrect. Relying on the state’s Property Tax Code, IVS developed sound evidentiary support for our opinion of value which included meticulous analytical metrics that the assessor could not refute. Presenting our evidence in a clear and concise manner would result in a total reduction of $258.5M for one year and there was a total of three years affected by the decision bringing the cumulative reduction to more than $775M. Although the jurisdiction had the right to appeal the judge’s decision, they respectfully declined to proceed with another appeal.
Preparing data, understanding key terms in appraisal and submitting reliable evidence presented by credible representatives led to this settlement.
If IVS can assist with your property tax matters, please contact us at (512) 858-2373.