Americans love underdogs. When the little guy triumphs – whether it’s in sports, politics or in legal disputes – it’s often a sweeter victory for us. Few people think of Walmart as an underdog. The retailer is the world’s largest private employer and it generates more...
If you drive southeast of Hennepin County for about 90 miles, you will arrive in Olmsted County. Their County Board of Commissioners recently approved a temporary commercial property tax hardship abatement policy for commercial and industrial property owners. The...
No one in Minneapolis has to be told how difficult 2020 has been. Of course, we're not alone in our struggles. The pandemic has forced unprecedented changes, with shuttered offices and public spaces silencing downtowns across the nation. After an utterly unpredictable...
The pandemic has changed the way Americans work, shop, socialize and more. Tens of millions of us have worked from home throughout much of 2020, doing much of our shopping online, while keeping forays to stores and restaurants to a minimum. Hope is on the horizon, of...
As regular readers of our Minnesota Commercial Property Tax Appeals blog know, we recently wrote about looming state budget shortfalls and how they might be addressed by legislators. The state’s budget office said it projects a $2.4 billion deficit in the two-year...
Minnesota’s commercial property owners feel the tugs of a variety of taxmen. For the past 20 years, there has been a Minnesota property tax on commercial industrial and utility properties, though it generates only about 4 percent of the state’s tax collections. (At...
Minnesota commercial property owners are as wary of headlines in 2020 as anyone else. This has been a bruising year that includes an ongoing recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the Minneapolis riots triggered by the death of George Floyd that...
In a previous post to our commercial property tax appeal blog, we wrote about a Streets.MN article that argues that commercial property taxes imposed by Hennepin County and Minneapolis should be replaced by a land value tax that would ease the tax burden on commercial...
A stone’s throw away from Foshay Tower, an undeveloped parking lot covers an entire block of downtown Minneapolis real estate. Why does this prime spot host cars instead of a sparkling skyscraper? The owner explained his reasoning four years ago to Minnpost: “There...
As Twin Cities metro area commercial property owners know, government officials and taxing bodies are confronted with a variety of difficult questions and challenges as they wrestle with setting tax levels for both business and residential properties. A real estate...
