Uniformity, Not Just Value: What Veritas Village v. City of Madison Teaches Commercial Property Owners

 Posted on November 11, 2026 in Property Tax

Nov 10, 2026 · Christopher L. Strohbehn

Most commercial property owners challenge their assessments on one question: is my number higher than what my property is worth? Veritas Village, LLC v. City of Madison, No. 2025AP1359, ¶¶ 20–29 (Wis. Ct. App. July 16, 2026) (unpublished), is a reminder that there is a second question, and sometimes it is the better one: is my property assessed at the same level as everyone else’s?

In July 2026, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed a circuit court ruling that the City of Madison under-assessed unsold apartment properties relative to recently sold ones in 2020, 2021 and 2022, in violation of the Uniformity Clause of the Wisconsin Constitution. The owner of a 189-unit downtown apartment building won the liability question. The appellate decision did not fix the refund amount; it left that determination for proceedings on remand. As year-end tax bills approach, both halves of that result are worth understanding—and owners should not wait for a bill to check whether objection deadlines have already passed.

Value and uniformity are different challenges

An excessive assessment value challenge says the assessor got your property wrong: the market says it’s worth $20 million, and it’s assessed at $25 million. The fight is over appraisal evidence on one property.

A uniformity challenge says the assessor treated your property differently from comparable property in the district. Article VIII, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution requires taxation to be uniform. So even an assessment that matches market value can be unlawful if similar properties are systematically assessed at a lower share of their value.

The court described three potentially overlapping categories of uniformity challenges (Veritas, ¶¶ 24–27):

• the taxpayer’s property was singled out for different treatment;
• the assessor used an arbitrary and improper method that systematically under-values other properties; or
• other property in the district was generally under-assessed.

The court noted that the third route rarely succeeds. Veritas was a case about the second: the method.

What Madison did

The City’s approach to apartment properties had two tracks. When an apartment property sold, the City set its assessment at or near the sale price. When a property did not sell, the City adjusted its assessment with a trending multiplier meant to reflect market change. Veritas itself was assessed at full market value through single-property appraisals during its annual assessment challenges—not because the opinion identified a recent sale of its building. The parties stipulated to those full-market-value assessments at trial (Veritas, ¶¶ 12–15).

The problem was that the multipliers didn’t keep up. The opinion reports the following figures from the owner’s expert’s analysis of nearly 6,200 commercial properties—not apartments alone. Unsold properties’ assessments increased by roughly 10–12% on average each year; sold properties’ increases were substantially higher (Veritas, ¶ 32):

These are assessment-growth figures, not percentages of market value. For apartments specifically, the opinion reports a significantly lower average assessment-growth rate for unsold parcels in two of the three years. Different growth rates alone do not establish a violation, and the law does not require identical percentage increases. The expert’s broader analysis persuaded the trial court that the City’s trending method systematically under-assessed unsold apartments (Veritas, ¶¶ 32–43). The circuit court agreed, and the Court of Appeals found the expert’s analysis was properly credited over the City’s.

The City’s main legal defense was that Wisconsin’s assessment hierarchy, which treats a recent arm’s-length sale of the property itself as the best evidence of value, required it to set sold properties at their sale prices. The court did not need to decide how far that hierarchy reaches in mass appraisal. Even if the City was right about sold properties, uniformity still required it to bring similar unsold properties to the same level. The opinion explains that assessment standards warn against using sales to reset sold parcels’ assessments without a method that produces an equal assessment level for similar unsold parcels—a concern associated with "sales chasing" (Veritas, ¶¶ 31, 44–47).

Why these claims usually fail, and why this one didn’t

Assessments generally carry a presumption of correctness, although the court did not decide whether it attached to these board-of-review final assessments because the result was the same either way (Veritas, ¶¶ 18, 38 & accompanying footnote). A taxpayer who simply believes "everyone else is under-assessed" will usually lose, because that is the hard third route the court described, and it takes district-wide proof most owners can’t assemble.

Veritas succeeded because the owner attacked a specific, identifiable practice and proved its effect with data:

• A defined method. The challenge targeted the City’s two-track treatment of sold and unsold apartments, not a general sense of unfairness.
• Expert analysis that tested the method. The owner’s expert compared assessment-growth rates and tested whether the City’s use of known sale prices distorted its assessment-to-sales ratios. A ratio of 1.0 means assessment equals sale price, but ratios for sold properties alone do not establish the assessment level of unsold properties. His hypothetical trended assessments helped expose that distortion (Veritas, ¶¶ 32–35, 41–43).
• A trial court that weighed credibility. The appellate court deferred to the circuit court’s decision to believe the owner’s expert over the City’s. Uniformity cases are often won or lost on that call.
• Discovery pressure. The City was ordered to pay nearly $10,000 in attorney fees on a motion to compel after resisting production; the Court of Appeals upheld that award because the City’s opposition was not substantially justified. Confidentiality was addressed through a protective order; the court rejected the City’s unsupported assertion that confidentiality created an evidentiary privilege. In a methodology case, the assessor’s native spreadsheets and formulas can be critical evidence (Veritas, ¶¶ 58–75).

Winning liability isn’t the same as getting paid

This is the part of Veritas that deserves more attention than it gets.

The circuit court found the owner was entitled to a refund of excessive taxes for each year. Under Wis. Stat. § 74.39(1), the default procedure when reassessment is necessary is to continue the action for reassessment before judgment. Section 74.39(3) permits judgment without reassessment only if the court finds that doing so serves all parties’ best interests and can determine the unlawful taxes with reasonable certainty (Veritas, ¶¶ 48–50). The circuit court concluded it couldn’t. Veritas offered several competing groups of comparable properties, changed its proposed corrected values after trial, and proposed a new average reduction on appeal. Those alternatives produced materially different remedies. The court therefore sent the case back to the Madison board of review to determine the appropriate assessments and resulting refunds (Veritas, ¶¶ 51–57).

The owner cross-appealed and asked the Court of Appeals to set the remedy itself. The court declined. It held that the reasonable-certainty finding wasn’t clearly erroneous and let the remand stand.

The practical lesson is to build the remedy case alongside the liability case. Proving the method was flawed is necessary. Translating that flaw into one defensible corrected number per year is what turns a win into a refund, and it is far easier to do before trial than after.

A year-end checklist for commercial owners

1. Check preservation first. Do not wait for the year-end tax bill. A claim under Wis. Stat. § 74.37 generally requires compliance with the board-of-review procedures in § 70.47, subject to statutory exceptions. Outside special first-class-city procedures, those requirements ordinarily include 48-hour notice of intent to object, a timely written objection, and supporting evidence under oath. Requested income-and-expense information for an income-method valuation is generally due seven days before the board’s first meeting. Waiver provisions and local procedures require separate attention. See § 70.47(7), (8), (8m), (16).
2. Compare assessments, not just bills. A levy increase and an assessment increase are different issues. Ask how your assessment was set: a recent sale or a single-property appraisal during an objection may explain a jump while comparable unsold properties changed modestly. Refinancing alone does not establish the pattern proved in Veritas.
3. Gather meaningful comparisons. Start with assessment rolls and available sales records for comparable properties over the same years. Do not assume that all underlying income-and-expense data is public; some information is confidential under § 70.47(7)(af), and litigation discovery may require a protective order. Compare methods and assessment levels, not merely a few low neighboring assessments.
4. Choose the theory and support the remedy. Decide whether the issue is over-valuation, non-uniformity, or both. Work with the appropriate expert to explain the comparison group, the corrected assessment for each challenged year, and the resulting excessive tax. Consistent, supported remedy calculations matter as much as identifying the flawed method.
5. Serve the claim and pay on time. For the ordinary § 74.37 route, serve a signed written claim stating the grounds and the amount as accurately as possible on the appropriate clerk in the prescribed manner by January 31 of the year the tax is payable. Timely payment of the tax or authorized installment is also required. The January deadline does not revive a missed board-of-review objection. See § 74.37(2), (4).
6. Track the court deadline separately. Ordinarily, a § 74.37 action must begin within 90 days after receipt of disallowance by registered or certified mail. Failure to act on the claim within 90 days is deemed disallowance, but the ordinary suit deadline is tied to receipt of that notice. A board hearing waiver under § 70.47(8m) instead triggers a special 60-day period from notice of the waiver. Alternative review routes have their own requirements and cannot simply be pursued alongside a § 74.37 claim for the same assessment. See § 74.37(3), (4)(c).

If the pattern in Veritas looks familiar, the time to look at it is before the claim window closes, not after.

Sources

• Veritas Village, LLC v. City of Madison, No. 2025AP1359 (Wis. Ct. App. Dist. IV July 16, 2026) (not recommended for publication). Official court opinion; vLex opinion. Key pinpoints: ¶¶ 3–16 (facts and procedure); ¶¶ 20–29 (uniformity framework); ¶¶ 30–47 (methodology and statistical proof); ¶¶ 48–57 (remedy); ¶¶ 58–75 (discovery sanctions). No official reporter or public-domain citation was verified.
• Wis. Const. art. VIII, § 1 (uniform taxation); Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7), (8), (8m), (16) (objection procedures, confidentiality, hearing waivers, and first-class-city procedures).
• Wis. Stat. § 74.37(2)–(4) (claim service, court deadline, prerequisites, and alternative remedies); Wis. Stat. § 74.39(1), (3) (reassessment and judgment without reassessment). Current procedural guidance reflects the retrieved 2026 statutory text; the Veritas opinion applied the 2023–24 statutes.