Firm 4 24 14 001In March 2012, the lawyers at Danks, Miller, Cory & Bridgers successfully challenged the method of assessing tax credit properties by the Forrest County Tax Assessor and the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. In addition to ruling against the County, the chancery court entered a permanent injunction prohibiting Forrest County from continuing to use an illegal methodology to inflate the true value calculation, and thus increase the ad valorem taxes collected from a business owner.

Forrest County appealed the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court claiming both that the methodology it used was proper, and that the granting of an injunction was improper because the statutory tax appeal process provided an adequate remedy at law. Today, the Mississippi Supreme Court issued a Per Curiam Affirmance of the decision by the lower court.

While before the lower court, we successfully argued that the statutory tax appeal process did not provide an adequate remedy at law, thus entitling our client to the immediate relief of an injunction. We also successfully overcame a subject matter jurisdiction challenge convincing the court that jurisdiction was proper based on Mississippi Code Section 11-13-11 which specifically says that “[t]he chancery court shall have jurisdiction of suits by one or more taxpayers . . . to restrain the collection of any taxes levied or attempted to be collected without authority of law.” In this case the taxpayer was not challenging a calculation error, but rather an assessment determination that was beyond the county’s statutory authority.

For more information on our administrative and tax appeal services, click here and here.