Business personal property is assessed from the rendition the owner files, run through the district’s depreciation schedule. Two things go wrong. The rendition itself is often a rolled-forward asset list that no longer matches what sits on the floor, and the district’s schedule is a generic curve that does not know how hard a particular piece of equipment has been run or what it would sell for today. Both produce a value above market, and both are fixable with records the business already keeps.
Ghost assets still on the rendition
Equipment that was scrapped, sold, traded or moved to another location frequently stays on the asset list for years. Every one of those line items is taxable value on something the business does not own, and a reconciliation against the fixed asset ledger usually finds several.
Depreciation schedules that outlive the asset
District schedules apply a standard curve by asset category and typically stop at a residual floor, so fully depreciated equipment keeps carrying value indefinitely. Where a piece of equipment’s actual condition, usage or resale market tells a different story, that is evidence the schedule does not have.
Inventory measured at the wrong basis or the wrong moment
Inventory is assessed as of January 1, and a business with a seasonal cycle can hold a very different quantity then than it does on average. Cost basis, obsolete and slow-moving stock, and consigned or in-transit goods all affect what should actually be on the roll.
Leased and third-party equipment assessed to the wrong party
Equipment under lease, customer-owned tooling and vendor-placed assets are regularly rendered twice — once by the lessor and once by the business using them — or assessed to whichever party the district happened to associate with the address. Sorting out who owns what removes value from the account outright.
We review the rendition against the fixed asset ledger and the district’s depreciation schedule, identify what should come off the account and what is carrying too much value, and file the protest inside the statutory window. Most cases settle at the informal stage. If they don’t, we present the case at the Appraisal Review Board (ARB) hearing, and if the board’s value is still too high, the appeal continues in district court or binding arbitration through Estes & Banks, P.C. Rendition penalties and delinquent business personal property accounts are their own problem, and we handle those too.
