Atlas Valuation Solutions LLC Industrial & Commercial Property Tax Consulting Services Real & Personal Property Tax Consulting Atlas incorporates property tax education into the consulting process. We interlink engineering, purchasing, accounting, and tax personnel; creating a team approach. We train your staff to properly classify and record new fixed assets and retire old assets. This process helps foster appropriate asset stewardship and unites the various sections of management in a proactive cost saving process. Atlas strives to develop a mutually benefiting relationship between the taxpayer and the local assessment community. The resulting relationship of mutual trust should lesson the need to introduce tax consultants to act as the conduit between the two parties. This process will ultimately save time and cost. Real and personal property can often be overvalued for purposes of annual property taxation. Property valuation is based upon a highly subjective estimate of the impact of varying factors such as age, physical condition, functional obsolescence, external obsolescence, capitalization rates and general market conditions. Due to these factors, your chance of paying more than your fair share of property taxes is high. Your property may be inappropriately assessed due to: Costs that do not contribute to value; Obsolescence attributable to technological change; Double taxation due to improper classification; Improper use of purchase price; Adverse economic conditions. How Atlas Can Help Atlas valuation professionals possess the background and experience to provide you with the appropriate solutions to your property tax problems, as well as help you analyze the issues and determine the accuracy of your property assessment. If we cannot resolve differences through negotiation, we will assist you through all stages of the appeal process. Our work involves quantifying the problem, gathering and presenting supportable data and providing expert testimony. Our valuation and property tax professionals can prepare an analysis of market value, functional and external obsolescence, or other issues…issues not always apparent to an assessor whose primary basis for determining value is cost. We can assist your counsel in developing strategy. Both sides of a case are reviewed to identify inconsistencies or errors to help determine direction of questioning. Our property tax professionals have the knowledge to analyze the facts and issues and the experience to act as your expert witness to support an appraisal or refute a claim. We present conclusive, documented evidence based upon broad experience and accepted standards of practice in the field. Benefits You Can Expect By conducting a thorough review of your property’s tax status, we can develop an appropriate strategy to help you minimize future tax liabilities. This solution process includes: Analyzing how the tax assessment system is structured; Verifying the data reported to the assessor; Identifying and quantifying functional and external obsolescence; Appraising real and/or personal property; Segregating the value of real, personal and intangible property; Identifying existing inequities among taxpayers; Reclassify property that is incorrectly classified; Identifying property requiring special treatment or that may be eligible for an exemption, credit or abatement; Providing litigation support. Asset Verification, Classification & Valuation Familiarity with historic machinery and equipment costs permits Atlas to analyze property records, focus on asset pooling issues, and rebuild fixed asset records. This process will permit efficient asset tracking stewardship, as well as identify and segregate non-value capitalized costs, fast-track construction, and identify ghost assets buried in capital projects. Market-Based Depreciation The assessment community implements mass-appraisal techniques where standardized depreciation or composite index schedules are applied to original costs to arrive at a theoretical fair market value. These schedules (typically based upon Federal tax lives) do not address physical deterioration appropriately, nor do they address any functional or external obsolescence issues negatively impacting your manufacturing operations. Atlas will formulate market based lifing studies that address your industry specifics. Residual Value Analysis Assessment schedules often have pre-established residual value parameters that derive residual value estimates contrary to real world fair market value trends. Atlas will formulate residual value estimates based upon actual market trends specific to your industry and machine tool applications. Functional Obsolescence Functional obsolescence is defined as a loss in value caused by conditions within the property such as changes in design, material, or process, resulting in inadequacy, excess construction, lack of utility, or excess operating costs. This type of obsolescence presents itself in 2 forms: excess capital costs and excess operating costs. Has your company expanded operations throughout the years? Are there a few to several buildings situated on the premise? Does your operation now require numerous forklift trucks and hundreds of feet of conveyor to patch bottlenecks in process flow? These are examples of excess capital cost. Functional obsolescence, particularly excess operating cost, is found in the following situations: Plants involved in the process industries; Older plants that have increased in size over time; Operations handling large volumes of material; Plants utilizing assets or manufacturing assets with a high degree of technology; Plants utilizing large quantities of identical machine units; Plants with areas of inactive machinery and equipment. Would you reconstruct your current manufacturing utility in identical fashion today? If your answer is no, perhaps you should consider having Atlas conduct a Greenfield Analysis. This analysis would highlight excess capital and excess operating costs negatively impacting your property value.