The Swartz Report: Pay Attention to Valuation Notices in 2025

By Donald Swartz, President

The Swartz Report: Pay Attention to Valuation Notices in 2025As the 2025 property tax season officially kicks off, we are in the process of sending out renewal letters to our clients, continuing our representation in real estate, business personal property, asset valuations and private rail cars. Several of our clients have entrusted our services for over two decades, and I am continually excited to represent our clients’ interests each and every year.

This year is no exception as we will experience reassessment in many states where we have a significant presence. Iowa, Missouri and Colorado will all be subject to the revaluation of real estate in 2025 and we anticipate increases in value based upon community needs. School districts continue to need money to operate to the best of their abilities; operating costs associated with various city, county, libraries and other districts continue to rise. Property taxes are the major source of income for some of these entities listed and increasing values generates income without increasing the annual mill levy (tax rate).

What does the mean to the average taxpayer?

A couple of things…

  1. Pay attention to the valuation notice mailed out to you in the upcoming months. If the valuation has increased over the previous year, ask yourself if the increase is warranted or does it appear excessive?
  2. If the value increase appears high, file an appeal to the local level and prepare your case with comparable sales of similar type properties. If this is not something you are comfortable in doing, contact a property tax representative (such as us) to review your situation.
  3. DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOU RECEIVE YOUR TAX BILL! Too often, taxpayers do not pay attention to the notice of valuation and do not realize the consequence until a tax bill is received later in the year. In most jurisdictions, this is too late to appeal the value. BE PROACTIVE!!

Hopefully this will spark interest in paying attention to the valuation notices, many of which will be processed and mailed to taxpayers in the next 30 days.

Railcar update

On the railcar side, each year Mark Phillips (of our office) prepares a savings summary for our clients who own private railcars. The cars are assessed property taxes at the state level (for the most part) and are apportioned based upon the amount of time or miles a car spends in an assessing state. There are many components to review in an effort to reduce the property tax liability and we are at the forefront of taking advantage of these allowances. Repairs and Maintenance Tax Credits, obsolescence studies, speed studies, idle time adjustments, lack of state situs and a review of state computations are several aspects we review as part of our compliance practice.

To put this in perspective, in 2024 we exceeded $6,800,000 in tax savings for our collective private rail car clients. Almost 30% of the savings were based upon appeals or discussions with the state representatives based upon a correction of errors in assessment calculations. Looking back on the savings estimates since I acquired the company in 2018, our lowest annual savings to our clients has been just under $6,000,000. What a tribute to our Indurante employees who continually put our clients first! This may explain why we continue to be the leader in the private rail car industry in providing property tax services – handling approximately 35% of all private rail cars and 70+% of the fleet manager market.

WELL DONE!

We look forward to another exciting year – please let us know how we can help.  As always, please reach out to me – or .

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