Cumbersome software, inefficient processes, a lack of data visibility… these are just a few things commonly mentioned by property tax professionals when we ask them to identify pain points in their current practice. Until a few years ago, corporate tax practitioners at Comcast, the global telecommunications company, would’ve said the very same things about their processes. Then they switched to TotalPropertyTax (TPT), and eventually added MetaTaskerPT, and turned things around. Here’s the story of why Comcast chose CrowdReason software—and how it’s impacted their practice since its implementation.

Cable companies, railroad companies, natural gas and oil companies—these are some of the types of organizations whose primary assets tend to cross county or jurisdictional borders. Because taxes are assessed on property located in specific jurisdictions, that creates a challenge when it comes to business personal property tax filings: How do you properly distribute the value of those assets over the various jurisdictions in which they’re located? This article examines the most efficient method for doing that, as well as how to choose the right allocation metrics to ensure the fairest possible distribution of value.

It’s no secret that the nature of work is changing, which is why a growing number of business leaders like yourself are beginning to assess what their future workforces might look like. Part of that assessment includes identifying which capabilities and tools will be most needed by their teams. In recent years, your research may have identified robotic process automation (RPA) as the answer to future challenges; today, there’s an advanced version of automation that will prove to be even more valuable for organizations: smart process automation, or SPA.

Taxes may be a certainty, but when it comes to property tax, the amount of taxes owed is not. That’s because commercial properties can be appraised in different ways, depending on who’s doing the appraising: an assessor or a fee appraiser. It’s important to know the differences in these commercial property appraisal methods so you’re better prepared to advocate for a fair assessment—and the appropriate amount of taxes owed.

After you receive an assessment for your business/commercial property, you may find yourself questioning the amount—but also wondering if it’s worth the cost to appeal the property tax assessment. In many cases, particularly for companies experiencing technological or economic change, the answer is yes. But a property tax appeal doesn’t make sense for every piece of property. While the answer isn’t a simple yes or no, there are a few tips to help you determine whether or not it’s worth the cost to appeal your business property tax assessment.

In my view, tax practitioners are no different than other industry professionals when it comes to analytics—the more analysis you do surrounding your work, the better you tend to perform. If you’re not measuring it, you’re probably not improving it.

You’ve just received an assessment notice for one of your commercial properties—now what? If the amount seems too high, hopefully you or another member of your property tax team will check the accuracy of the valuation by using one or more commercial property valuation method, and then appeal if need be. (Don’t have time to do all that? There are software tools that can help.)

Like every industry, property tax has its share of conferences. Whatever you’d like to know more about, whether it’s real estate, personal property, business valuation, compliance, depreciation, tax technology, or anything else, there’s probably a conference that covers it. You’ll also find conferences that specialize in certain industries (like the Broadband Tax Institute’s annual conference for internet and cable companies) and ones that focus on taxation in certain regions (like the Texas Association of Assessing Officers conference). There’s no shortage of learning opportunities for those looking to expand their knowledge and skills.

Those of us who do property tax advisory work know that thinking in a straight line doesn’t always yield the best, most profitable results. Creative thinking and research, on the other hand, usually uncovers numerous (legal and value) discrepancies leading to identifying over-assessments. Knowing how to best measure these will ensure you provide the best advice to your clients—and doing good work generally means more advisory work for you. Below are a few ideas for the assessment of business personal property values I’ve used in the past to assist clients; at one time or another, they’ve all benefitted a client and increased the value of my property tax advisory services offering.

I think it’s safe to say that all property tax teams strive to avoid penalties. But they happen. Teams working for companies with a large number of properties sometimes don’t have enough staff to keep up with deadlines or they have new, untrained staff members. Other times a failure in the process leads to a missed deadline, and extra expenses are incurred. But just because penalties happen doesn’t mean they’re acceptable—or that you should stop searching for ways to avoid them.