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Jeff Prang: Property Value Decrease is Reviewable
Property Value Decrease is Reviewable
BY JEFF PRANG
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Los Angeles County Assessor
There’s an important date that will allow property owners to file an application that may allow for a decrease in their property tax because of a decrease in the value of the very same property.
The date is July 2nd and it’s for filing a Decline-in-Value Review. For those unaware of what a Decline-In-Value Review entails the following information should be helpful. Furthermore, the 2022 Decline-in-Value filing period is July 2, 2022, through November 30, 2022.
Applications will be available beginning on July 2, 2022. For more information, visit: www. assessor.lacounty.gov/div
California’s Proposition 13 established the base year value for property tax assessment. It also caps the growth of a property’s assessed value at no more than two percent a year unless the market value of a property falls below the base year value.
In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that allows a temporary reduction in assessed value when a property suffers a “declinein-value.” A decline-in-value occurs when the current market value of a property is less than the current assessed value as of January 1.
The office of the Assessor mailed more than 59,000 Decline-in-Value review notifications to property owners with existing reductions in 2021. Additionally, more than 1,400 Decline-in-Value review notifications were sent to commercial property owners. These commercial properties, likely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, were reviewed proactively by the Assessor for possible reductions in assessed value for 2021.
You must file a Declinein-Value Review Application form (RP-87) with the Assessor between July 2 and November 30 for the fiscal year beginning on July 1. Applications are valid if postmarked by November 30. If November 30 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or a legal holiday, an application is valid if either filed or postmarked by the next business day.
You must demonstrate that on January 1, the market value of your property was less than its current assessed value.
On your claim form, provide the Assessor with information that supports your opinion that the market value for your property is less than the assessed value.
The best supporting documentation is information on sales of comparable properties. You should select two comparable sales that sold as close to January 1 as possible, but no later than March 31.
You may query the Assessor’s database for sales in your neighborhood by visiting the Property Assessment Information System. While the submission of comparable sales is helpful for the Assessor in determining the market value of your property, applications submitted without comparable sales will be accepted and processed.
If the market value as of January 1 is less than the trended base value, your assessed value will be lowered to the market value for the fiscal year beginning on July 1. The ad-
Filing Period is from July 2 through November 30.
justed value will be reflected on your annual tax bill.
If the current market value is higher than the trended base value, no change in the assessed value will be made. Property owners are encouraged to review the Assessor’s website, assessor.lacounty. gov/div, for more information about Decline-in-Value and how property value is assessed.
Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang has been in office since 2014. Upon taking office, Prang implemented sweeping reforms to ensure that the strictest ethical guidelines rooted in fairness, accuracy and integrity would be adhered to in his office, which is the largest office of its kind in the nation with 1,300 employees and provides the foundation for a property tax system that generates $17 billion annually.
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RETAIL
Continued from page 6 2. Modified in-store shopping experiences
A consumer survey showed that 61% of consumers rely on physical stores being open for them to purchase the goods they and their families need (National Retail Federation, 2021). Thus, businesses need to put in place policies that could make customers safe to shop with them.
And it looks like there are stores that have risen to the occasion. During the holiday shopping season, 70% of holiday consumers said that they felt safe while shopping.
However, this may not be enough. Retailers need to elevate the experiences at their stores starting with technological changes like check-out free and touch-free shopping. This can make shoppers feel safer and accelerate the reduction of physical interaction.
In line with that, spaces have to undergo redesigns to accommodate reduced physical exchanges. That includes the usage of mobile payment systems rather than static POS counters. Another improvement that stores could make would be to improve product displays. By doing so, businesses could focus more on the experiential aspect of
Omnichannel reality. Consumers no longer distinguish between online and offline shopping. They may start shopping in one and checkout in either. A Harvard Business Review report disclosed that 73% of shoppers used multiple channels to discover and buy products. customers (ET Retail, 2020). 3. Rise of private labels
A study from CB Insights revealed that private label sales are soaring. Private labels sell three times as much as branded products, which forces CPG manufacturers to rethink their strategy in the coming years.
The biggest reason retailers have been going in-house in the last few years is because they earn an average of 25% more. Compare this to a typical 1.3% gross profit they get from a typical grocery item and it’s easy to see why private labels have become more mainstream.
As a consequence, the retailer will also have leeway when it comes to pricing their products competitively. And millennials are driving this growth (Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer). Private labels comprise 25% of a typical shopping cart, but a millennials would have 32%. 4. Deep retail Marketers have mined data from users’ smartphone and browser habits for years, but it will come to a head as the third decade of the millennium approaches. And this will happen because of artificial intelligence. With $156.5 billion revenue in 2020, it is poised to further climb to $300 billion in 2024, a 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.1% (IDC, 2020). The figure could have been higher, but adjustments have to be made because of the lingering effects of the pandemic. This is not surprising, as studies show that AI adoption can save retailers $340 billion annually due to a more efficient supply chain (Capgemini). Retailers use AI for various applications. These include 2D/3D computer vision, natural language processing, AR and VR, sensor technology, and robotics. It’s also a contributor to the development of a C2M (customer to manufacturing) business model, where companies use big data and AI insight to personalize the products for the individual consumer. In C2M, AI will have a more intimate view of the user and what they need more than the users themselves know. It will be in charge of a secure network that uses analytic tools, behavioral databases, algorithms and image recognition. It will combine it with technology from an IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem to target the user’s consumption habits. Too dystopian? No worries—it will have a ton of regulations to limit the type and amount of data it can harvest. It will likely also need consent from the user. 5. Voice search and personal assistants The discussion of AI naturally dovetails with voice search and personal assistants. In the US alone, adult ownership of smart speakers and smart homes has reached 55.6% in 2020 (Voicebot.ai, 2020).
Strike Two Against California’s Board Diversity Statutes
BY CHRIS S. JACOBSEN
Poole & Shaffery, LLO
On May 13, 2022, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Maureen DuffyLewis rendered a verdict in Crest v. Padilla, Case No. 19STCV27561, that California Corporations Code section 301.3 (also known as SB 826) mandating California-based public companies to add to their boards of directors one to three women directors (depending upon the size of the board) violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
This verdict was California’s second defeat on statutes addressing diversity on public company boards of directors, following the April 1, 2022 striking down of Corporations Code section 301.4 (also known as AB 979) which sought to mandate board representation from certain underrepresented communities.
SB 826 required each publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices are located in California to have one female director on its board of directors by the close of the 2019 calendar year and, no later than the close of the 2021 calendar year, a minimum of three female directors if the corporation’s board had six or more members, a minimum of two female directors if the corporation’s board had five members, and a minimum of one female director if the corporation’s board had four or fewer members.
Violators of the statute were to be subject to fines of $100,000 for the first violation and $300,000 for a second or subsequent violation.
In rendering its verdict, the court first noted that, under California law, classifications based on gender have long been considered “suspect” for purposes of equal protection analysis and that a meritorious claim under the equal protection clause must show that the state has adopted a classification that affects two or more “similarly situated” groups in an unequal matter.
The court then noted that the plaintiffs had carried their burden to prove that men and women are similarly situated for purposes of SB
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Valencia (661) 964-4493 www.debt-mediator.com 826’s gender-based quota. As a result, the burden of proof shifted to the state to provide that SB 826 satisfies strict scrutiny.
The state may appeal each of the rulings on SB 826 and AB 979 within 60 days after entry of their respective judgments. In addition, other pressure may come to bear on public companies to diversify their boards of directors.
For example, Nasdaq has adopted a “comply or explain” board diversity rule, which establishes a “disclosurebased framework” that will require each Nasdaq-listed company (with specified exceptions) to have, or explain why it does not have, at least two diverse board members, including at least one who self-identifies as female and at least one who self-identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+. Accordingly, the issue of diversity on boards of directors is far from settled and continuing legal and societal developments should be expected for quite some time.
Poole & Shaffery is located at 25350 Magic Mountain Parkway, Suite 250, Santa Clarita 91355. They can be reached at (855) 9977522 or www.pooleshaffery. com/#~3x4c645
TRENDS
Continued from page 26
And while Amazon’s 75% market share is still dominant with its Alexa interface, the coming ubiquity of voice searchenabled personal assistants like it will be a mainstay in the future.
Even the figures today are eye-opening. Voice search now comprises 20% of Google searches, which should incentivize retailers in making their websites searchable through voice.
In 2020, it is estimated that up to 30% of searches no longer used a screen and possibly used other technologies. Andrew Ng, the chief scientist at Baidu, even pegs this number at 50% (Perficient). 6. Instashopping
Retailers should leverage social media’s 2.65 billion users for their social media toolkits and strategy. This is why social media giants are now testing ways to load payment information into the platform itself. Instagram is one of the first to do this, though it’s still experimental.
In the coming years, social networks will now not only be places to discuss and keep up to date with your friends but for retailers to keep in touch with their user base.
In fact, 60% of Instagram’s users (or 600 million of their total 1 billion users every month) already use the platform to find and purchase products. Adding a native payment system will expedite this process. 7. Omnichannel reality
It’s 2019 and the term “omnichannel” is still bandied around in retail circles. This is simply because it’s the future of the retail industry. As already mentioned, consumers no longer distinguish between online and offline shopping. They may start shopping in one and checkout in either. A Harvard Business Review report disclosed that 73% of shoppers used multiple channels to discover and buy products.
In the last few years, retailers have capitalized on this phenomenon by offering agile solutions for both online and physical retail. 2019 and beyond will demand more, however, as the rapidly maturing technologies of AR and VR can be used to augment the shopping experience in a given store.
For example, AR can be used to preview items before actually buying them. This makes AR especially useful for furniture and clothing. 60% and 55% of retailers (ThinkMobiles), respectively, incorporate the technology into their purchasing process.
Consumers demand the same experience and information they need whatever channel they use. Retailers shouldn’t differentiate between online and offline—their customers won’t. 8. The “Experience Economy”
The traditional retail model of buying a product is so 20th century. Today, consumers want not only the product but also the act of the purchase itself. And while studies show that remodeling your store can benefit your bottom line, to survive in 2021 and beyond you need to look further into giving your customers a more engrossing experience.
“Brands as a culture” had become more tangible in 2019. Big retailers like Ikea and Nike are all experimenting with small-format or concept stores.
These stores offer a limited stock of items but provide pertinent services or curated content. Millennials (again) are the driving force behind these changes, but they’re only the spearhead of evolving consumer behavior across all contemporary generations. All in all, experience-related expenses have grown 6.3% in the period of 2014 to 2016. Material purchases grew only 1.6% in the same period (McKinsey). 9. By your powers combined
Sustainability is not optional anymore, as far as consumers are concerned. A study from Unilever highlights the changing stance of consumers in this aspect. Twenty-one percent of consumers now report that they would prefer brands with an active environmental responsibility campaign.
The retail trends report predicts that this about-face in terms of customer predilection represents $1.1 billion worth of untapped potential for packaging and sustainable practices.
Consumers also detect facile environmental initiatives that are mere ad hoc campaigns. This is why most companies are now using sustainable and ethical practices more closely aligned with their organization’s values. This allows them to commit to these campaigns more productively and for the long-term.
Even government institutions (Forbes), at least on the state level in the United States, are jumping on the green bandwagon by banning single-use plastics. 10.Time is money
Most retailers know that time is the biggest currency they have, so they use tools like fleet management software to automate their back-end and other administrative processes. What they’re just starting to realize is that consumers are also time-sensitive.
For example, an Alix Partners study found that consumers are becoming more impatient with delivery times — from about 6 days in 2012 to just 4 days in 2018. Amazon Prime members are even more demanding — they want their items delivered in less than 4 days (AlixPartners)!
What this means is that with the plethora of online retailers to choose from, customers abandon their (loaded) carts if the retailer doesn’t offer the shipping options they want.
One in 4 retailers would rather pay slightly more than pay extra for shipping and 88% will pay more for sameday (PwC) or one-day delivery, after all. Differentiating your business from the crowd means going the extra mile to make your shipping fast, efficient, and free.
Prepare for What’s Ahead in the Retail Industry
Retail is a volatile industry and the rapid and widespread adoption of technology just makes it more so. Also, as the market becomes populated by a younger demographic, companies are finding it hard to abandon traditional modes of thinking.
The “retail apocalypse” that has seen over 8,000 store closures is proof that businesses quickly need to adapt to a change in consumer behavior to survive.
As a retail professional, knowing what’s in store for the industry gives you a leg up on your competition. It will also give you the insight to innovate in unforeseen gaps in the market that any industry shake-ups tend to do.
