Real Estate Valuation & Property Tax Representation

Related topics:

• Why Choose Arthur Consulting Group?
• Full-Service Provider
• Process Savvy
• Fair Market Value
• Personal Property
• A Balanced View

Why Choose Arthur Consulting Group?

• Recently, the Los Angeles Business Journal published its List of the Largest Property Assessments in the County of Los Angeles. 40% of the properties named are currently represented by Arthur Consulting Group.
• In San Francisco, home to some of the world's most famous buildings, Arthur Consulting Group handled 7 of the 10 largest property tax appeals, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
• We are not "arm chair analysts." We visit our locations and interview key managers. Our broad expertise uniquely enables us to understand our clients' business. With our team of appraisers, economists, engineers, statisticians and financial analysts, Arthur Consulting Group is a strong advocate for property owners.

Full-Service Provider

Arthur Consulting Group offers a range of services:

• Fully representing our clients through appeals hearings and court.
• Providing compliance work, and acting as an outsourced property tax function.
• Integrating cost segregation for new construction with property tax and accounting functions, by providing cost seg data to set up fixed asset ledgers, and to feed the property tax compliance, reporting, and representation functions.
• Applying real and personal property valuation and analysis to other purposes, such as property acquisition and divestiture, charitable contribution deduction for federal tax purposes, estate valuation, casualty loss valuation, business interruption valuation, and purchase price allocation.

We usually work on a fee basis, including firm fixed-price fees. Where warranted and desired by our client, we can also work on a contingency basis, or on an hourly basis.

Process Savvy

Most of our professionals have been property tax directors for large firms, assessors, or both. They personally know the assessors and the appeals board members in many areas, and are intimately familiar with processes, viewpoints, strengths, weaknesses, and procedures.

Assessors and appeals boards often look to our well-documented analysis to provide clear, cogent property tax data. Often, our clients ask that we prepare our valuation report and meet with assessors when a property is being reassessed—before a debatable value is put on the books.

Arthur Consulting Group knows how to present our findings in terms that can be easily understood by assessors and appeals boards. And because of our extensive experience, we know how to propose solutions that will be beneficial for all parties.

Fair Market Value

A property can be significantly over-assessed, due to the inclusion of intangibles that were part of the original asset purchase, or due to internal and external obsolescence factors that reduce fair market value.

While we are adept at applying traditional approaches, we also have an unsurpassed breadth of economic, financial and engineering expertise to apply more technical analysis to more sophisticated issues.

Personal Property

Improved analysis and representation of personal property can yield significant tax savings. Arthur Consulting Group has extensive expertise in doing just this.

We review asset lists line-by-line to discover any potential assessment errors, and to rid records of ghost assets. We strive to reclassify assets into more favorable categories or values based upon our detailed understanding of the functions, technologies and economics of the assets. We can conduct statistically valid lifecycle studies, or use other analytical methods to accurately determine lives and values.

A Balanced View

Many of our clients are the largest taxpayers in their jurisdictions. They depend on good community relations, and want to be good neighbors. At the same time, they also want a fair assessment.

Moreover, as large taxpayers, they must be conscious of consistency in tax reporting to various jurisdictions and agencies.

Arthur Consulting Group is very cognizant of these considerations. In the past, our clients may have dealt with property tax representation firms whose "gunslinger" attitudes created more problems than they solved.

By contrast, we will never jeopardize a client's position for our short term gain—even when working on a contingency basis. We yield to our client's judgement on which issues to pursue, when to compromise, and how far.