About a year after the Walt Disney Co. won property-tax refunds totaling $9 million, the company has sued Orange County Property Appraiser Amy Mercado, challenging her office’s assessments of four dozen properties.
No theme parks are cited in the petitions, but the properties include some of Disney’s best-known hotels, including the Port Orleans Resort, the Grand Floridian, the Contemporary Resort and the Disney Yacht & Beach Club.
The theme park giant has already paid the ad valorem taxes on all the properties, as required by Florida law to challenge an assessment. The bill totaled about $40 million figuring in a 4% discount for early payment of the tax obligation.
The lawsuits, filed earlier this month in circuit court in Orange County and first reported by Florida Politics, ask the court to set aside the appraiser’s assessments because Disney considers them excessive; adopt an “appropriate” appraisal methodology; and award Disney its legal costs.
A lower assessment would lower Disney’s tax bill.
Tampa lawyer Robert E. V. Kelley Jr., representing Disney, argued in each of the multiple filings that the property appraiser’s methodology did not comply with state law and were contrary to professionally accepted appraisal practices.
He also argued in each case the assessed value exceeds the property’s market value.
Ana Torres, Mercado’s chief deputy property appraiser and general counsel, said the office has not been served yet with most of the lawsuits, all of which were filed electronically June 9 or 10 in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, but the actions were not a surprise.
“It is common legal practice to continue to sue on properties that you [sued over] in prior years,” she said, saying the company has been challenging some assessments annually since 2015, before Mercado took office. “Whatever they sued over in 2015, I would expect we’re going to be sued over [for tax year] 2021 because they have every single year since.”
Neither Kelley nor Disney responded to an email seeking comment.
Torres said the appraiser’s office received a lawsuit earlier this month from lawyers challenging the $41 million assessment of the Wyndham Lake Buena Vista — Disney Springs, saying it “greatly exceeds the just value of the property.
Filed by S. Brendan Lynch of the Lowndes law firm, the filing notes the tax bill “substantially exceeds taxes which would have been levied… had it been properly assessed.”
Last July, Mercado settled a drawn-out legal battle over appraisals of Disney theme parks by her predecessor, former Orange County Property Appraiser Rick Singh, which resulted in the company getting property-tax refunds totaling about $9 million.
Disney was levied $296.2 million in property taxes for its theme parks in tax years 2015 through 2020, all of which the company disputed.
The company’s arguments were similar then to the latest filings, alleging the appraiser’s staff overstated the fair market value of Disney properties, which led the company to overpay taxes on the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and other venues.
The latest filings do not say what Disney believes are the appropriate values for the properties, which also include the “Team Disney Building,” assorted other administrative offices and the company’s “casting” center. The lawsuits attached the property tax bills for individual venues, each paid in November.
Port Orleans, the Louisiana-themed resort with an assessed value of $379, cost Disney about $5 million in property taxes; the Disney Yacht & Beach Cub, assessed at $266 million, carried a tax bill of $3.5 million; the Grand Floridian, assessed at $268 million, cost $4.1 million; and the Art of Animation Resort, assessed at $248 million, cost $3.3 million.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com