The Importance of Reviewing Personal Property Tax Renditions
You’re familiar with income tax and sales tax, but business owners often put personal property tax on the back burner. It’s important to make a practice of reviewing this annually because penalties apply for late filing or failure to file your personal property tax rendition.
What exactly is personal property?
Personal property is not permanently attached to land. In most cases, it is moveable and does not last as long as real property.
And what is a personal property tax rendition?
A “rendition” is simply a report that lists all the inventory and assets your business owns (other than real estate) as of a certain date each year. Generally, this list includes everything your business owns except land and buildings –from the smallest stapler to a large piece of machinery – and all the furniture, equipment, and company-owned vehicles in between.
The personal property rendition is filed with your local taxing authority. Different states have different deadlines and different exemptions, and there are twelve states that don’t tax personal property:
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Minnesota
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- South Dakota
If Mize CPAs maintains the depreciation schedules for your income taxes, your accountant will send you a fixed asset schedule mid-summer and ask you to update and return it.
It’s important to spend the time each year to ensure this listing is accurate because your personal property tax bill is based on it. You don’t want to pay more tax than what’s absolutely necessary!
Contact us with questions on how your personal property tax renditions can affect your individual situation.
