DuCharme, McMillen & Associates.

• Author: Howey, Brian A.

Could property-tax reassessment be your recurring nightmare?

"We love reassessment," John McMillen admits. "It's what we look forward to."

DuCharme, McMillen & Associates, a tax-consulting firm for corporations, has just recorded its 22nd year of dynamic growth and is preparing to go international. Yet, this Fort Wayne-based company is thriving on the basics. As Indiana prepares to go from a 10-year to a four-year property tax revaluation cycle, DM&A is the company you can't afford not to hire.

As many of the 50 states hunt revenue by auditing industrial and commercial enterprises, DM&A is the defender who will comb a company both prior to and, primarily, after an audit or reassessment, sniffing out appeals. The end result can be big savings after a hearing before your local county review board.

After property reassessments were conducted in 1979 and 1989, the Indiana General Assembly changed the intervals, with the next coming in 1995. Both McMillen and Duane DuCharme advise their 1,100 Indiana clients--ranging from mom-and-pop operations to General Electric and Amoco--to involve their firm before paying the tax bill.

"We help get it set at the value that it should be," McMillen explains.

"But people can't wait until the last minute," DuCharme says. "You only get 30 days to appeal."

He cites Allen County, where 140,000 to 150,000 parcels will be reassessed. "They have a very short period of time--a year and a half," DuCharme says. "They don't have time. Mistakes will be made."

Of the Indiana cases the firm has handled, DM&A runs a 65 percent success rate of return on appeal. "Our people go out, measure, inspect and assess," DuCharme says. "It's just good old-fashioned hard work that allows us to win the appeals." The company's fees are charged on a contingency basis, providing an incentive for its consultants to find as many savings as possible.

That staff includes 70 in Indiana and 260 in the nation, with another office in Toronto. DuCharme was heading to London in late fall to assess the establishment of a European operation.

After filling an unclaimed and uncharted market niche challenging government property tax assessments in 1971, DM&A diversified.

In 1972, it established a sales-use tax division that now accounts for 35 percent of revenue. As states recoiled from Ronald Reagan's policies that ended many sources of federal aid, they began beefing up their audit staffs to sniff out revenue. While companies like General Motors, Exxon...