Dive Brief:
- Trump Old Post Office LLC — a subsidiary of the Trump Organization led by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — has taken its $3.4 million possessory interest property tax dispute with DC's Office of Tax and Revenue to the DC Superior Court, the Washington Business Journal reported.
- The historic post office, which Trump is converting into a luxury hotel, is a federal property leased to a for-profit organization, and therefore subject to the special tax assessment. However, Trump representatives maintain that tax officials miscalculated how much the company owed.
- This is the third attempt by Trump's company to get DC to waive the possessory interest tax, which it has already paid, on the post office.
Dive Insight
Trump Old Post Office officials claimed in their appeal to the DC Superior Court that the assessments were excessive and were a violation of their constitutional right to due process. The organization is requesting that the Office of Tax and Revenue lower the property's assessed value retroactively and issue a tax refund for the last two years.
The District implemented the new assessment in 2014, and it has drawn criticism from business owners in addition to Trump who say the tax does not consider an individual property when establishing an assessment rate, but instead uses a pool of "like properties."
In May, the House approved two bills that would allow for faster sales of $8 billion worth of empty or antiquated federal buildings, as well as accelerate the federal lease process. As part of the Office of Management and Budget's 2015 "Reduce the Footprint" plan, federal agencies must begin reducing their total office square footage this year, and the new bill requires the General Service Administration to establish a database of all federal properties, whether or not they're for sale.
Although the current estimate of total sales involved with that measure is $8 billion, Brian Turmail of the AGC told the ENR that the dollar volume of construction would far exceed that figure. The ENR reported that the government's existing building stock most likely to be sold off would be turned into both residential and commercial buildings as well as warehouses.