CityLab: After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown

[No Excuses]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/after-the-retail-apocalypse-prepare-for-the-property-tax-meltdown?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

Thought this would be interesting for those interested in local/state issues and tax policy.
 

Quote

WEST BEND, WI—Kraig Sadownikow doesn’t look like an anti-corporate crusader. The mayor of West Bend, Wisconsin, stickers his pickup with a “Don’t Tread on Me” snake on the back window, a GOP elephant on the hitch, and the stars-and-stripes logo of his construction company across the bumper.

 

His fiscal conservatism is equally well billboarded: In the two hours we spent at City Hall and cruising West Bend in his plush truck, Sadownikow twice mentioned the 6 percent he has shaved off the Wisconsin city’s operating budget since becoming mayor in 2011, and stressed its efforts to bring more business to town.

 

So you might be surprised to learn that Sadownikow (he instructed me to pronounce his name like sat-on-a-cow) is personally boycotting two of the biggest big-box retailers in his town, Walmart and Menards, the Midwestern home improvement chain. He’s avoiding shopping at these companies’ stores until they cease what he sees as a flagrant exploitation of West Bend’s property tax system: repeat tax appeals that, added up, could undermine the town’s hard-won fiscal health.

 

 

Sadownikow is one of many unlikely combatants who have lined up against “dark store theory.” That’s the ominous-sounding term that administrators have given to a head-spinning legal argument taking cities across the U.S. by storm. Big-box retailers such as Walmart, Target, Meijer, Menards, and others are trimming their expenses in a forum where few residents are looking: the property tax assessment process. With one property tax appeal after another, they are compelling small-town assessors and high-court judges to accept the novel argument that their bustling big boxes should be valued like vacant “dark” stores—i.e., the near-worthless properties now peppering America’s shopping plazas.

 

 

[twa]

They are compelling them?

 

It is a property tax, if similar commercial property exists it should be taxed similarly for property tax purposes.......NOT for how viable the tenant is

[No Excuses]

3 minutes ago, twa said:

They are compelling them?

 

It is a property tax, if similar commercial property exists it should be taxed similarly for property tax purposes.......NOT for how viable the tenant is

 

Allowing giant corporations to drive competitors out of business and then pointing at their empty lots to lower your tax bill is a pretty quick way to turn every US small town and struggling suburb into a hellscape, if they aren't already.

 

This is a race to the bottom.

[LD0506]

And once again, fueled and driven by an army of legal jackals that would take sacks of gold teeth to defend Hitler as long as they got it up front.

[twa]

Are they asking for empty lot evaluation price or empty commercial building evaluation?

 

If the community wants to tax a business or corp using unequal property tax evaluations is not the right way.

 

 

4 minutes ago, LD0506 said:

And once again, fueled and driven by an army of legal jackals that would take sacks of gold teeth to defend Hitler as long as they got it up front.

 

[PeterMP]

Not a big fan of all of Warren's ideas, but she's right that we need a tax on wealth and not just individual wealth, but corporate wealth too.

 

And that's global wealth.