New York businesses have an uphill climb when it comes to property tax, and corporate tax rates in general—it is ranked 49 out of 50 (just above New Jersey) on the Tax Foundation’s state-by-state comparison with regard to business tax climate. And over the last decade, property taxes in New York City have risen at a rate three times faster than income growth. (The recently created New York City Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform is likely to recommend tax reforms in the coming year.) In recent years, the state has been making strides toward improving its tax system by enacting things like a two percent property tax cap and real property tax relief credits. Still, the tax climate may be a reason why some companies have chosen to leave the state (though that perspective is debatable).

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.

The start of a new year is a popular time for predictions—what developments do experts and visionaries see around the bend?

Whether or not your company operates in one of the few states that tax intangible assets—those that have no physical form but do have value—understanding intangible asset valuation is important. Why? Because it’s part and parcel of ensuring a fair assessment for both real estate and personal property.

If you’re operating your business in multiple states—or are contemplating putting down roots in another state—tax policies and obligations are probably already top of mind. Particularly if you’re planning to invest a substantial amount of money into a new facility, you’ll want to have a good understanding of your tax burden before you commit. But even if you’re already located in more than one state, you and your tax team are likely spending a lot of time keeping track of bills and deadlines for your various locations. Whichever situation you’re currently in, you need a resource that can help you make sense of it all.

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.

By now, you’ve heard all about how automation saves time. Applied to the manual processes in any industry, it takes over the tedious and time-consuming (but necessary) tasks of everyday work so employees can focus on activities that provide a greater return. In the case of business personal property tax, automation means your team members can forego data extraction and data entry work in favor of long-term strategy activities like tax planning and predictive analytics—tasks that have real impact on an organization and make your team more valuable.

If you’re part of a corporate tax department, there are plenty of resources providing information about tax issues and strategies related to real property, but few doing the same for personal property—even though personal property offers similar opportunities for tax savings. To help with strategizing on both fronts equally, this article starts by defining each term at a basic level, then highlights the differences between real and personal property that are relevant to tax practice.

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.

If you’ve read our blog at all, you know our stance on using software to manage your team’s property tax processes: We’re all about automating commercial property tax management workflows, so you get back time for high-value tasks, like determining how to protest unfair assessments.