Cache County v. Property Tax Division

In Cache County v. Property Tax Division, 922 P.2d 758, 761 (Utah 1996), the Court upheld a tax settlement agreement between the property tax division of the tax commission and Questar Gas that covered five years of disputed assessments. For the settlement in that case, the property tax division and Questar agreed to a separate assessment value for each of the five tax years that represented a "reasonable value of Questar's gas utility property for property tax purposes." Id. Several counties that received a portion of Questar's taxes objected to the settlement. Id. at 760-61. One basis for their objection was that the agreed-upon amounts for each year of the settlement did not reflect fair market value, in violation of the Utah Constitution, because they were merely "reasonable" assessment values. Id. at 761. However, the Court upheld the agreed-upon valuations in light of testimony by the property tax division's appraisal expert that the settlement assessments "fell within a reasonable range of fair market value," and because the contesting counties failed to show that the claimed error in the adjusted settlement assessments was material. Id. at 765.