Tech-Driven Property Tax Appeal Management

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Caitlin: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, "Tech-Driven Property Tax Appeal Management." My name is Caitlin Alaburda, and I will be your moderator.

Joining us today is Kristen Wilder. Kristen is a director of sales for CSC's property tax solutions. Ms. Wilder joined CSC in 2001 and has spoken at various conferences, luncheons, and trade shows regarding property tax software and automation. Ms. Wilder holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California San Diego. And with that, I'd like to welcome Kristen.

Kristen: Today's presentation is geared toward law firms and corporations who manage property tax appeals. Specifically, we will look at some common problems that arise during the property tax appeal process. We will also discuss the consequences of having a poor appeal process, and we will address how CSC can help improve your management of property tax appeals through automation using software. Toward the end of the presentation, we will take a tour of CSC's AppealTrack software. And at the very end, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions during the Q&A portion of the presentation.

Before we begin, let me give you a little background on who we are. CSC is a 125-year-old, privately held company with over 8,000 employees across the globe. We offer a wide variety of corporate products and services, including tax compliance software for property and income tax, real estate document recording, business license products and services, UCC filings, digital brand security and domain management, and more. Visit us at www.cscglobal.com for more information.

Let's start today with the basics surrounding property tax appeals. As you all know, property tax is a cyclical process each year. The assessor determines the value of each parcel each year and reports the value back to the property owner. The property owner then has a certain amount of time to determine whether they think that the value is fair and, if not, to file a formal protest with the assessor's office.

Now once the protest is filed, the owner or their agent must provide evidence disputing the new value, usually within a certain window of time. A hearing date is then set to review the evidence and to make a determination on the disputed value. If the value determined at the hearing is still contested by the owner, there's usually a process in place to escalate the appeal to maybe an appeal board or even to court to resolve that dispute.

Now, obviously, that is a very high-level description of what happens during the appeal process, and the steps involved can vary drastically from one jurisdiction to the next. But the essential issue is I get a value, I have a short window of time to review whether that value is correct and, if not, to appeal, usually using an appeal form that's unique to that assessor. Then I have a short period of time to gather and submit my evidence and to argue my case.

So let's talk about some of the issues that can plague a company managing appeals. Now the first issue is needing to understand the assessor's appeal process in each county where the property is located. And if you're managing a large portfolio or if you have a large number of clients with properties across the country, that's actually a really daunting task. You need to know where each property is located. You need to understand the various appeal levels that are available to you.

You need to know when to expect the assessment that will be released for the year. Now think about that last issue for a minute. If I have clients with properties all over the country, I have to understand when each value is going to be published for the year. Now there are over 20,000 assessing entities across the U.S., and sometimes the dates are different for personal property tax appeals versus real property tax appeals. There are different processes and different due dates for assessor-level appeals versus board-level appeals, and each have their own required steps and deadlines. Now we're talking about keeping track of close to 100,000 individual appeal rules, forms, and deadlines. Again, that's a really daunting task.

Now some jurisdictions have information that's more accessible than others. Some have a website. Some don't even have a website for me to research all of these deadlines and procedures. Is it an online form that I need to submit? Is there a piece of paper that I need to fill out? Who does the form go to? Can I email it to someone at the assessor's office? If so, who? All of these processes require research.

Now the next thing I need to know is what I think that the property itself is worth, which means even before I get to the appeal and even before the assessor releases their value, it means I have to do a lot of research before those values are published. Do I need to get an appraisal done? Do I need to pull comps for the area? Do I need to do an income approach to value for the property? For personal property, do I need to look up the depreciation schedules and calculate a depreciated value? Again, it's a lot of research.

And once I do the calculation for the various property values, I then need to put together my evidence for the appeal. But when is that evidence due? Do I have to submit it when I file the protest? Do I have 30 days to submit it or 60 days? What compounds the issue is having to manage appeals in multiple states or multiple counties where the rules and requirements are different, not to mention the due dates are different.

And what about collecting the evidence? Do I know what documentation I need for the appeal and where to get it? Do I need to get information from my clients or from another department? Do I need rent rolls or financials? And these are just the jurisdictional requirements. What about the issues stemming from the properties themselves?

If I work for a law firm that manages nationwide clients, I not only have to request and compile the data provided by the clients in a usable way, but I also have to research those jurisdictional requirements. Plus multiple people within my firm might be touching different parts of my data collection process. For example, as the attorney, I might be filing the brief and representing the client at hearings, but I also have paralegals within my firm that are collecting information in support of my argument. I might have a paralegal contact the client to gather financials. And each person is going to have their own sets of processes and work papers, all probably stored in different files or spreadsheets, none of which may be accessible by my colleagues. And there's a risk to missing a step without having a centralized process, missing a key piece of information or maybe a key deadline. There's also a high risk of task and data duplication with the same information potentially being collected by multiple people within my firm.

All of that leads to inefficiency and lost revenue because multiple people are collecting the same pieces of evidence, or worse I'm not aware that someone else in the firm has the information that I need for my appeal, so that data is completely unavailable to me at all. And that can lead ultimately to an unsuccessful appeal and even to the potential loss of clients.

The single biggest issue that I see with law firms is that they have this decentralized process for appeals. Everybody does something different, and all the data and documentation is stored in a different place. Each attorney tends to store their appeal records either in paper folders or in separate spreadsheets that are unique to the property, which means it's very difficult to understand firm-wide how many clients that we even have or to get status updates for a particular customer quickly across multiple appeals. When firms use paper or have a decentralized process, people are left having to search for information in each individual file and to manually compile updates for their clients or their colleagues. That means that things can fall through the cracks, and I might even forget to bill a customer.

So obviously having a decentralized process for managing appeals is inherently risky, but there are also some issues stemming directly from the data itself. The first issue is the volume of information that must be collected in order to properly appeal a value. I need to have a database of my client's properties and parcels, parcel characteristics, such as legal description, use, square footage, and acreage. I need to know whether my client owns the parcel or an LLC owns it or even a landlord. I need to understand the condition of the property and collect historical values for the property. So that means that I need somebody to research all of this information on each piece of property and keep the information up to date each year. So if there's anything inaccurate in either my data or the assessor's parcel records, it could impact the appeal outcome, or even might be grounds for an appeal. So upfront property research is critical to the success of any appeal.

Now on the personal property side of things, I also have to maintain an asset list of the fixed assets that are at each location as well as the asset type, the age, the asset class, so that then I can depreciate those assets and determine whether the value of that property is over assessed.

Now in addition to research on the parcel under appeal, I also need to research market conditions for other like properties in the area. Did a similar property sell last month for much less than my property? Or is the business at the location operating at a loss? Understanding the fluctuations and market conditions and keeping on top of these fluctuations is essential to my ability to successfully appeal a property value. But that means a lot more data collection and a database available to me with this information because this information will serve as the backbone of my appeal.

And finally, I have to put all of my supporting evidence together to prepare for my hearings, which if the documentation is stored in multiple places is going to take a while to compile. There's also the risk of missing the collection of a key piece of evidence if I don't have a centralized, auditable process for the data collection. How do I know whether or not I've collected everything I need for the protest? How do I know whether I fully analyzed market conditions for my appeal? The only way to know that is to have a centralized process and a centralized database for all of the information related to an appeal.

Now on top of the procedural research and property research, I also have to maintain a good relationship with my clients, at least if I want them to continue to be my clients, which means I have to be responsive to client requests. I have to proactively provide reports and updates on their appeals. I have to maintain transparency not only with the appeals I'm working on, but also maintain transparency with the invoicing of my customers. These are areas that I routinely see are ripe for improvement with many law firms, and that's because usually the person supporting the client doesn't have access to all the information that the client needs, and because information is compartmentalized, it's very difficult to provide visibility to the customer, especially with a tight turnaround. Also having to drop what I'm working on at a moment's notice to provide a report to a customer or to give a status update, when it's requested, means that I have less time to actually work on appeals and work on other parts of my process.

Another area that can be cause for concern with firms is surprisingly billing your customer. Some firms I've worked with are fantastic at appeals. They're incredibly successful at winning appeals, and all of their energy goes into the appeals process. But these same firms sometimes lack centralized processing for billing their clients. Routinely these firms don't know what has and hasn't been invoiced. They don't know what the client has and hasn't paid yet. They don't know when they're going to expect to be paid. These client management issues have led firms out of business because they run into significant cash flow problems and they can't pay their own bills. So no matter how successful you are at lowering values and winning appeals, if you aren't able to efficiently manage the business side of the process, you aren't going to be making any money or be a successful firm.

And the final issue that I see in this area actually has to do with gaining clients in the first place. Many of the larger firms out there are starting to advertise their use of appeal technology during the client acquisition phase. They have fancy reports and tools to give to the customer. They have automation to notify the client of status changes to their portfolio. Or they advertise the use of a client portal where the client can just go in and self-serve and get their own data. So in order to compete with these firms, you have to be able to show your client that you can deliver the same level of visibility into the portfolio as these other larger firms. Many larger clients even are requiring a client portal so that they can self-serve and access information whenever they want. So if you're still managing your process with paper and spreadsheets, these larger customers might choose another firm right from the beginning.

At the end of the day, procedural problems, data collection problems, and even client management problems will lead to unsuccessful outcomes for your firm, whether the result is an unsuccessful appeal, a lost opportunity to gain new clients, maybe negative advertising, and ultimately it results in lost revenue for your firm. If you maintain a poor appeal process, you run the risk of missing key pieces of information that would lead to a successful appeal. Maybe you miss an appeal filing deadline because you didn't know the deadline was coming up. Maybe you didn't get the new value until the day before the appeal was due. Maybe you didn't know what form to use or when the evidence was due. This poor data collection process leads to the same outcome — an unsuccessful appeal.

We discussed this a little bit earlier, but a poor process can also lead to a longer revenue collection timeline. I don't get paid quickly if either the appeal takes a long time to get resolved or I take a long time to bill the client.

And finally, a poor process can lead to unhappy clients. Whether they're unhappy because of a poor appeal outcome or because of poor client communication, the result is exactly the same, an unhappy client, and we all know there's one thing that unhappy clients are really good at and that's telling other people that they had a poor experience. For whatever reason, people seem to be much more willing to talk about negative experiences than positive ones. And maintaining a successful business means maintaining happy clients.

We've talked about the appeal process and some of the negative outcomes of having a poor appeal process. But now let's look on the bright side. Let's discuss how CSC can help improve your appeal process and ultimately save your company or your clients some property tax dollars.

CSC offers a web-based tool, called AppealTrack, that manages the entire appeal life cycle from the day I get a new client or a new property to the final resolution of the appeal and everything in between. AppealTrack manages my customer's portfolio of property, tracking all information related to the client's parcels, personal property accounts, and their values. It researches and provides me with parcel attributes automatically so I don't have to collect things like the legal description or zoning, square footage, or even tax rate area. It provides me with appeal deadlines and the date that the assessor is expected to release the new values. It tracks hearing dates, tasks, and it warns me of upcoming deadlines and events. It stores documents in a centralized library for easy access by me or by my colleagues. It calculates tax savings and contingency fees, so I can both report savings to my customers, but I can also invoice my clients from the software. It even allows me to track and generate check requests for the property tax bills paid to the collector or to the landlord each year.

But why should I choose CSC? Now as most of you know, a software system can be amazing and efficient, but without the people to support the product, a user is going to be unsuccessful. At CSC, our AppealTrack support personnel bring with them an average tenure of over nine years, and with that tenure is the knowledge of not only AppealTrack and how the software works, but also a deep knowledge of property tax and the critical challenges faced by our clients.

We customize the implementation of AppealTrack for each client. We scope out your goals. Whether your goal is to file appeals in a fraction of the time, or maybe your goal is to improve your client's visibility to the appeal and their property data, we're going to work with you to design a business process to accomplish that goal. We also provide our clients with access to property tax information, including appeal filing requirements and appeal forms, due dates, parcel data, jurisdictional contact information, and a comprehensive list of tax rates across the country.

So most important is the people. While our clients love our software, as shown by our client retention rate of 94%, they actually like our support more. Our average client Net Promoter or NPS score, which is a nationally-recognized benchmark that measures client satisfaction on a scale between -100 and +100, is 97. Anything over 80 in the software industry is unheard of. Our people are what make our more than 700 clients successful.

AppealTrack tracks up to 10 different values on each parcel, including my target value for the appeal, so I can analyze whether or not I need to perform an appeal in the first place. And when a result is received, it helps me determine how successful I was in the appeal. It provides me with tax rates so the anticipated tax savings can be calculated, and my client can even be invoiced well before a refund is issued, improving my cash flow. It manages all paperwork and documentation associated with the protest, including filling out my jurisdictional appeal forms and allowing for the creation of customizable documents and email templates so I don't have to manually create the same document over and over again. It stores all of my appeal documents in one centralized folder so the other people working in my firm will always have access to the property and appeal related information that pertains to them.

It provides for a secure site for my clients to share and upload confidential documents, such as financial records, and it automatically archives these documents on the correct property so I don't have to manually store these files myself. AppealTrack can compile multiple documents together in a single evidence package so I know exactly what was provided as evidence on the appeal.

The biggest benefit to AppealTrack is that it centralizes all of my processes, allowing my colleagues and my clients better visibility into all property and parcel data, and to provide better analysis of the portfolio, ensuring a more successful appeal outcome. It even provides my clients with a portal for reviewing property and appeal results, so the client can self-serve. And it allows me to automate the client invoicing process, ensuring that I never miss billing a customer.

In a few minutes we will dive into the AppealTrack software to take a closer look at each one of the features and benefits that the software brings. We will look at the appeal preparation process, from researching parcel and value data and filling out the appeal forms to managing the appeal tasks and deadlines. We'll explore how AppealTrack saves time by reducing manual data entry, providing batch processing of tasks and appeals, and how it provides jurisdictional and parcel data on each of the properties, reducing the need for me to research this data.

We will also explore how the software helps firms to effectively manage their clients, from facilitating client communications to generating reports for my clients or reports that help me to better manage the business aspect of my firm. We will look at the document management and document generation features, allowing me to access all appeal-related documentation without requiring a lot of manual effort to name, file, and archive these documents.