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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana Tax Court has reversed for a Columbus car dealership after finding that three appeals it filed regarding errors in the assessments of its property between 2016 and 2018 presented questions about the objective application of an already-determined base rate prescribed by a land order.
Chevrolet of Columbus Inc. skidded into an argument with the Bartholomew County assessor over the assessed value of its property for the 2016 through 2018 tax years.
The car dealer had purchased a roughly 4-acre parcel of vacant land in Columbus for $1,763,130, where it built a car sales and service facility. The buildings were placed on the “primary” land while the remaining 61,418 square feet of property remained unused for future development.
The assessor assigned Chevrolet’s property an assessed value of $1,734,600 for the 2016 tax year, $3,257,100 for the 2017 tax year and $3,417,300 for the 2018 tax year. Chevrolet appealed, seeking to correct what it called a “clerical, mathematical, or typographical” error.
Before the Indiana Board of Tax Review, Chevrolet argued that the primary land per the county’s land order was to be assessed at $10 per square foot and usable undeveloped land at $3 per square foot. Instead, the primary land was assessed at $13 per square foot in 2016 and 2017 and at $15 per square foot in 2018, while its usable undeveloped land was assessed at $3.90 per square foot in 2016 and 2017 and at $4.50 per square foot in 2018.
The assessor disagreed, saying that between the 2012 and 2016 tax years she applied a base rate of $13 per square foot to all of the primary land in Chevrolet’s “neighborhood” and a base rate of $3.90 per square foot to all usable undeveloped land. She also claimed Chevrolet’s appeals were untimely.
The Indiana board agreed Chevrolet’s appeals were untimely filed. It explained that Chevrolet was required to file its appeals within the 45-day statutory deadline for challenging a property’s assessed value, not the three-year deadline applicable for challenging objective math errors.
In a Friday reversal of that decision, the Indiana Tax Court likened Chevrolet’s circumstance to Muir Woods Section One Ass’n v. O’Connor, 172 N.E.3d 1205 (Ind. 2021), noting Chevrolet’s three appeals present questions about the objective application of an already-determined base rate prescribed by a land order.
“Specifically, during the administrative process, Chevrolet claimed each of its land assessments contained a ‘math error’ because the Assessor did not use the established base rates in Bartholomew County’s land order when calculating the assessed values of its land,” Judge Martha Blood Wentworth wrote.
The Tax Court found that the errors raised in Chevrolet’s appeals were not inherently subjective, but rather challenged the objective application of a predetermined base rate.
The court concluded there was “no dispute” that Chevrolet’s appeals were initiated using the revised Form 130 correction of error appeal procedure, and that Chevrolet filed its appeals for a correction of error within three years of when the taxes on its 2016 through 2018 assessments were first due.
“Moreover, Chevrolet’s appeals raised objective errors concerning whether the Assessor used base rates from the applicable Bartholomew County land order when calculating the assessed values of its land,” it wrote. “Accordingly, the Indiana Board erred in finding that Chevrolet’s appeals for a correction of error were not timely filed.”
On remand, the Tax Court ordered the Indiana board to determine whether the assessor applied the proper base rate to Chevrolet’s 2016 through 2018 land assessments. It also ordered that it address the alleged 2016 underassessment based exclusively on the evidence already included in the certified administrative record.
The case is Chevrolet of Columbus, Inc. v. Bartholomew County Assessor, 21T-TA-28
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