About Us

Our Mission:

To provide commercial and residential California property owners with exceptional property tax, valuation, and representation expertise to achieve fair and equitable assessments and improve efficiency of property tax administration.

Independent Tax Representatives, LLC (ITR) focuses on property tax valuation and assessment appeals for high-value and complex commercial and residential properties in California. Our San Francisco-based team offers responsive service and extensive technical expertise in appraising complex tangible and intangible properties. Since 2004, ITR professionals have successfully appealed billions of dollars in assessments, earning a well-deserved reputation as tenacious advocates for equitable and fair property assessments on behalf of major property owners throughout California.

Firm History:

ITR was founded in 2004 by Mark Ong at the urging of longtime clients. Since then, a highly technical ITR team has delivered expert valuation services and resolved billions of dollars of assessment appeals.

ITR thrives under any economic conditions. During the last recession, ITR successfully represented clients in all major counties in California. Since the market recovery in 2011, the ITR team was an indispensable part of clients’ due diligence and management teams who purchased, constructed, re-positioned, recapitalized, and disposed of assets in California.

ITR has become particularly known for successfully quantifying intangible components of the purchase price for hotel properties. Immediately prior to forming ITR, Mr. Ong was the managing director of property tax services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Francisco.

Geographic Coverage:

We specialize in property and transfer tax services in California. Our services are designed to follow and take advantage of the famous property tax law, Proposition 13. All 58 county assessors are governed by Prop 13, but not all of them follow Prop 13 correctly.

Original transfer taxes were levied against owners who transferred properties. However, recent development in transfer tax law expanded the government’s ability to collect transfer taxes when a transfer of legal entity interests that caused a change in ownership for property tax purposes. Proper planning before a business enterprise sales transaction occurs can save significant transfer taxes.

COVID-19 and Your Assessments:

COVID-19 will profoundly remake commercial real estate, and its effects will take time to develop and solidify. ITR is taking the following actions to achieve the maximum reduction possible:

  1. To make an effective argument to take COVID’s effects into consideration in property assessment as early as possible so lower assessments can start as early as posible

  2. To develop valuation parameters when there is a lack of sales transactions to rely on

  3. To closely monitor and communicate to clients any changes in laws, rules, and regulations related to COVID that will benefit clients and may result in lower property assessments

  4. To maintain constant communication with clients to gather just-in-time reasons to justify lower property assessment