Tax certiorari proceedings can have a substantial impact in many school districts. A tax certiorari is the process by which a taxpayer seeks to lower its assessment. This process has a dual impact on a school district. First, the reduction of assessments results in an increase in the school tax rate. Second, the school district must issue tax refund.

The law allows school districts to intervene in these proceedings principally because the school district bears the major portion of the refund. In a typical case, the school district pays twice the amount of the refund of the town. Although the town and the school district generally have similar interests, there are many advantages for a school district to assert its right to defend these assessments.

We can advise the board as to whether the case is appropriate for settlement.
If a refund is warranted, we can often arrange for payment over a number of school fiscal years to minimize the impact in one year.
We maintain a database of properties that have filed for refunds. We can provide the Business Manager the knowledge he or she requires to budget for refunds in the current fiscal year and beyond.
The school board can retain the right to fight a request for a reduction. This is especially true with properties that have a significant impact on school budgets but a minor impact on a town’s budget. Since there are often many school districts in a given town (or towns within a school district) the school district’s interests can differ from the town’s interest.

We have an active caseload of approximately 250 tax certiorari proceedings with land values exceeding one billion dollars. In addition, we monitor hundreds of other tax certiorari cases for our clients.

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