The Indiana Law Blog has a post on the ongoing battle by big box stores to have their real estate assessed based on the “dark store method.” They want their properties valued the same as similar, vacant stores. The reasoning, as I understand it, is that they argue that their business methods make the property valuable and assessments should be based on the value of the real estate, not the value of the business methods used to operate the store.
This would make sense if the box stores could open up in the middle of a sparsely populated rural area or a blighted hell hole and make money. The fact that they can’t show that the location matters very much to the value of the operation. If the courts are going to take this seriously, they should make the box stores demonstrate how valuable their business methods are by showing the value those methods have in a sparsely populated area or blighted area divorced from the value created by the surrounding community. That’s the amount of their discount from the value determined through traditional assessment methods.
One of many ways in which Big Box stores stealthily destroy healthy economies by various “cooked books, three-card-monte swap gimmicks, … monkeyshines, and countless other cons, swindles, and hornswoggles” (homage to James Howard Kunstler) promising “economic growth and development.”
You mean the blighted area isn’t the store itself?
Source.
I found this post timely as Neil Young is touring shortly and he’s got a new album in which he bemoans GMO’s and corporations. (He’s in one of his moods.)
The song I’ve been playing a lot? It’s called Big Box. Song, lyrics.
Not an authority on this stuff, but aren’t these big box stores the same ones who hold their demands for tax breaks over officials, threatening to go elsewhere if they don’t get them, and then when they are installed, we watch all the local businesses go belly-up? When they are in business, apparently they also place a heavy demand on our public services while getting huge tax breaks. Then when the box stores go belly-up, or move down the street to another huge facility, make the demands that you just mentioned? Maybe government folks need to get some guts here, because none of this is in the interest of the common good.
All kinds of public services – roads, policing, and welfare. Remember the article that laid out how Wal-mart was costing us billions?
They’re not alone – the fast food industry does the same.
Sort of a “devil’s bargain”. Big business coming to save us in trade for our soul.
Joe, incredible source information from your entries. Especially the breakdown showing how Indiana is really getting messed over by Walmart. And communities actually want these folks to come in? It like me inviting muskrats to my pond. Meanwhile, the Waltons are real stand-up conservatives who look down on poor people, while being the biggest welfare recipients in the state. People who read this need to go to your “billions” link,
Cheap stuff always has hidden costs – the solution is simple but possibly difficult- stop shopping at Walmart (and…all box stores)