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The national corporatocracy looks wimpy the impregnable, predatory, corrupt TX corporatocracy.
But you people adore BigCorp as the sum of human achievement.
http://www.texasobserver.org/propert...tretched-thin/There are basically two ways to challenge a tax appraisal—on value and on unequal appraisal. The first claims that a property has been appraised above market value. The second claims that while a property may be appraised at market value, others like it are appraised for much less. Before 1997, an unequal appraisal claim required an expensive property analysis called a ratio study, and it was seldom used.
Popp’s amendment created an easier, cheaper way to claim unequal appraisal and gain an automatic reduction in value—so easy that it is now routinely used in tax protests and dominates big-ticket litigation. You simply select a “reasonable” number of “comparable” properties (available on the appraisal district’s website), adjust their values up or down (your house has a swimming pool, mine doesn’t) and find the median—the middle number on the list. What’s reasonable or comparable isn’t spelled out. Market value is beside the point. If your valuation is higher than the median, it gets lowered to that number. The amendment is now called the equity statute, or simply “equal and uniform,” echoing the Texas Cons ution’s dictum that taxation be “equal and uniform.”
David Hugin, a Popp Hutcheson lawyer, argued the case in Galveston. Fairness was the theme: The appraisal district had wronged Valero by overvaluing its refinery, and the law showed the jury exactly how to set things right. It produced a breathtakingly simple answer to the vexing question of worth.
All the jury had to do was look at the comparables, the other two refineries in Galveston County—Marathon’s little 84,000-barrel-per-day plant, which processes only light sweet crude oil, and BP’s 451,000-barrel-per-day behemoth (now also owned by Marathon), which runs all kinds of crude oil, sprawls over 1,200 acres and is one of the largest, most complex refineries in the U.S. It had been appraised for $800 million more than the smaller refinery. “They are massively different,” said Wright. “Like comparing a corner grocery to a Kroger’s.”
Photo by Jen Reel
Austin attorney Jim Popp responds to his critics: “I think the focus on ‘equal and uniform’ is misplaced. The focus ought to be overall on improving the property tax system.” There are 27 refineries in Texas, more than any other state, and no two are alike. Some convert tar to gas, some need a higher grade of crude, some make asphalt, some have more secondary conversion capacity. Under the rubric of fairness, the unequal statute flattens the differences between sophisticated industrial facilities, with the result that tax liability shrinks. “I can see equity being an appropriate concept where you have a large number of similar properties, but (refineries) are not cookie cutters,” said Gregg Davis, executive vice president of Capitol Appraisal Group, an Austin firm. “The only similarity is, the final product is gasoline. Everything else is going to be different.”
Yet the two other Galveston County refineries would determine the value of Valero’s 245,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Texas City. Since there were only two plants, there was no median, so the jury simply took Valero’s adjustments for innumerable differences between the two refineries, added the two final values, and divided the sum in half. That was the basis for the new appraised value of the Texas City refinery. Thus $189 million in taxable value fell away, and the Texas City school district and other local en ies, which had already paid $5 million in a previous settlement with Valero, started scraping up another $5 million in tax refunds they now owed the company.
“With the equal and uniform statute being interpreted the way it is, it’s hard to win,” said Todd Stewart, an attorney with the Houston law firm Olson & Olson, which represents local government en ies. “It’s a boxing match without any ropes.
The national corporatocracy looks wimpy the impregnable, predatory, corrupt TX corporatocracy.
But you people adore BigCorp as the sum of human achievement.
much more to , TX citizens gonna get even bigger facials
Major GOP Donors, Business Tycoons to Advise Dan Patrick
At a press conference this morning, Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick announced a new pillar of his transition: the creation of six advisory boards, filled with businesspeople, to guide him on public policy. At first, that might sound useful. The business community as a whole has sometimes been a helpful voice in favor of transportation, water infrastructure and education spending.
But the list of names Patrick released today aren’t neutral technocrats and disinterested businesspeople—many are longtime GOP donors, and many have a strong personal interest in what the state does and doesn’t do.
As a whole, the six panels—economic and workforce development, economic forecasting, energy/oil & gas, tax policy, transportation and water—represent
a potential rat’s nest of conflicts of interest and influence peddling.
http://www.texasobserver.org/dan-pat...iness-tycoons/
"potential" ?
hardly related. you're grasping for straws, boutons.
directly related to the pro-business corruption of TX Repug govt
"the amendment died years ago—but the man who wrote it is a respected Austin tax attorney, Jim Popp. His firm, Popp Hutcheson, has represented some of the most prominent plaintiffs in lawsuits against appraisal districts, among them Western Refining, the JW Marriott hotels, H-E-B, Walgreens, the Formula 1 racetrack in Austin and Valero."
Popp very definitely will work, or has worked for, with, the companies on DannyPat's corrupt-by-definition advisory boards. Killing (property) taxes, with help from lawyers like Popp, is a perennial Repug obsession.
It's no reach at all that at that high level of state business, lawyers and corps are well connected.
His enemy thinks with a singular brain along with 'you people.' It's ALL related.
you're goddam right.
petro-state TX is owned and operated by BigCarbon and other BigCorps, in huge web of lawyers, law firms, accountancy firms, banks, politicians, elected judges.
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