Pardon the pun, but I couldn’t resist that title for a blog post on the subject of property tax interest.  Usually when we think of interest we think of the additional amount owed by taxpayers who fail to pay their … Read more

If property is under construction, is it being “used” by its owner? That is the arcane but important question that the North Carolina Court of Appeals recently addressed in the Highwater Solar appeal concerning the 80% property tax exclusion available … Read more

The national trend towards consolidation of the healthcare industry under large providers is very evident across our state. Be it the purchase of western Carolina’s largest non-profit hospital system by an even larger healthcare provider or the continued expansion of … Read more

[UPDATE 2/2020: Adopting reasoning similar to mine below, in March 2019 the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board rejected the 2018 ethics report and recommendation and concluded that Baldwin violated the attorney-client privilege held by the three Penn State executives. The Disciplinary Board … Read more

Three times in the past five years North Carolina appellate courts and administrative bodies have wrestled with the question of how to define inventory for purposes of the property tax exclusion created by G.S. 105-,275(34). In the first two cases, … Read more

What percentage of North Carolina cities and towns rely on their counties for the collection of municipal property taxes? 60%? 80%? I don’t know the exact figure, but I’m certain it’s much closer to 100% than it is to 0%.  … Read more

Unless you are in desperate need of a sleep aid, I assume you don’t normally read law journals.  But my friend Tom Kelley from the UNC Law School and I just published an article in the UNC Law Review on … Read more

Subdivision can make for knotty property tax problems. Here’s some help to untie them. Assume Billy BlueDevil owns Parcel A in Carolina County.  In February of 2018, he subdivides Parcel A into four subparcels, A1, A2, A3 and A4. Billy … Read more

Discoveries are confusing, thanks to lots of special rules that apply only to these types of tax bills.  I explain the basic process here.  It’s not just the calculation of discovery bills that can get complex; so too are the … Read more

January 1 is the key date for property tax exemptions.  That’s the date on which the assessor takes a theoretical snapshot of a property’s ownership and use, the two primary criteria for property tax exemption eligibility. If a property doesn’t … Read more