According to Misty Kitson, Blaine County Tax Assessor, several companies protesting their tax bills are headed to tax court with the county.
Those companies include DCP Midstream, Merit Equity Leasing, Black Mountain Sand, Great Salt Plains and several others, although four are confirmed. The contest is over 2022 assessments.
Tax assessments are levied on all the property a company owns in a county, including pump stations, pipelines and real estate. Protests are a common method of negotiation, where the taxed company claims – or protests – the taxed amount is too high, while the county justifies its assessment. If no agreement is reached, the argument can end up in tax court.
Previously, the state or county could use a specialist in the oil industry to represent it in tax court or protests. However, legislation ended that practice last year, in spite of the objections of assessors across the state, who, while they may be well-versed in values and purposes of oil field equipment, are not trained specialists. The oil companies, meanwhile, are still able to avail themselves of their own specialists to represent them. Some assessors have claimed that gives the companies an unfair advantage in addition to their notoriously big budgets for legal representation.
Some companies issue protests as a matter of course, whereas others only do so occasionally. When a protest is lodged, the company is still liable for paying its taxes by the date due, but the taxing entity – in this case the county – cannot access the funds until the matter is cleared by the courts.
That waiting game, in some counties, can have a serious impact on the school districts and other services that rely on the money provided through county taxes.
Fortunately that is not the case in Blaine County thus far, and funding continues to be dispersed as previously scheduled.