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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowLowe’s Bloomington home center store will continue to be assessed for tax purposes at rates set by the state after the Indiana Tax Court turned back an appeal that sought to significantly cut the final assessment for several years.
The Indiana Tax Court upheld final assessments Thursday in Lowe’s Home Centers, Inc. v. Monroe County Assessor, 19T-TA-17.
The national big-box home-improvement retailer challenged its real estate tax assessment for the 2014-2017 tax years for its store built in 1998 at the Whitehall Crossing shopping center.
After the Monroe County Assessor valued the roughly 134,000 square-foot store for those years in a range of about $9 million to About $9.4 million, Lowe’s appealed, arguing through its methodology that the stores should be assessed in a range of roughly $3.7 to $4.3 million.
Ultimately, the Indiana Board of Tax Review set the final assessments in the middle, in a range of about $5 million to $5.9 million for those years.
Tax Court Judge Martha Wentworth affirmed the final determination, rejecting Lowe’s contentions that its proposed valuation methods were wrongly rejected.
“Lowes has not demonstrated to the Court that the Indiana Board erred in rejecting its sales comparison approach and income approach valuations or in excluding the obsolescence depreciation adjustments from its cost approach valuations,” Wentworth wrote in affirming the final determinations of the Indiana board.
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