D.C.’s Kafka-esque assessment process

As the owner of a commercial property (albeit a very small one and definitely not a “trophy building”)  in the District who annually has to appeal his overassessment (albeit without benefit of a well-connected lawyer). I was startled by your Aug. 8 front-page article “D.C. settlement surge shrinks developers’ bills.” My experience with both the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue, as well as its “independent” Board of Real Property Assessments and Appeals, for the last nine years has been almost exactly the opposite of that described in the article. 

Like clockwork each February, I receive a “Notice of Proposed Real Property Assessment” in which the assessor routinely  overvalues my particular property in the face of all logic, common sense and precedent (even vis-à-vis identical, cookie-cutter units within the same commercial complex that are contiguous to it). Then I’ll send in my “First Level Administrative Review Application,” along with a request for an “in-person” hearing with my assessor. After all these years, I’m on a first-name basis with him, and we even discuss basketball during these friendly and frequent get-togethers. But that changes nothing. A few weeks later the assessor will always reject my incontrovertible evidence with an official form letter, and I’ll always escalate the appeal up to the next rung on the ladder — a hearing in front of the appeals board.

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At that meeting, the board will take a cursory look at the data that I furnished,  state “we cannot overrule an assessor — that’s not our function” and thereafter send me a letter of rejection on those exact and Kafka-esque procedural grounds. (The board is much more a bit of window dressing than independent body in my book.) Invariably, though, before taking the matter to D.C. Superior Court for adjudication (for the full Kafka experience), I’ll lay out my case in front of a supervisor at the Office of Tax and Revenue. At that point, and only at that point, will the city take a serious look at the quite obvious facts and then reduce the assessment to just a little more than what it really should be.

This is the commercial property tax ritual in the District as I know it. It never occurred to me that there was any possibility whatsoever of getting an underassessment on a property — only this elaborate dance to just get to “equalization” (more or less). But perhaps I’ve been practicing the wrong dance steps.