The recent decision by the Michigan Supreme Court to not hear big box store tax cases brought jointly by Marquette and Breitung townships to the Michigan Court of Appeals leaves local governing entities across Michigan standing to lose significant amounts of revenue badly needed to help provide services to local communities.

Big box stores throughout the state – like Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse in Marquette and the Home Depot in Breitung Township, which were the stores involved in the appellate case – will now likely see an opening to greatly increase claims for lower tax assessments after the ruling.

The two Upper Peninsula townships initially lost challenges to the tax practice of evaluating big box outlets as so-called “dark” or vacant stores for tax purposes at the Michigan Tax Tribunal. The case then went to the state appellate court where the townships lost again.

With the high court recently deciding not to hear the case, local governments are now hoping for renewed efforts to provide relief via the state Legislature. We urge lawmakers to find a way to fix this problem as soon as possible to restore funding to local governments and to stop what will likely be a flood of new valuation refund requests from not only big box outlets, but smaller companies too.

Local governing entities faced with refunding hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue to big box store companies will find it increasingly difficult to provide basic services to residents and run local government.

This will likely leave local governing boards with tough to impossible choices in allocating increasingly smaller amounts of available funding to the numerous projects, programs and services that make their communities run.

It is also likely townships and other governmental entities will be increasingly resistant to offer big box developers deal sweeteners for new store projects. Some communities might also decide to begin charging the big box stores increased fees for plowing, fire and police protection and other services.

Lawyers found the loophole now being exploited by the big box stores. Hopefully, lawmakers in Lansing can now do something to plug that loophole tightly for the future. Maybe now, communities across Michigan – which have been slow to get on board with the big box tax issue and its affects – will finally understand the significance of this practice and see that they stand to lose greatly in this situation.

They need to lend their voices to the local calls for changing the law.

Like the officials of Marquette and Breitung townships, we don’t blame the big box stores for using this legal mechanism to help their businesses save money, but we want this stopped. The sooner, the better. The effects of this practice could be devastating to our local communities and none of us, not even the big box stores, can afford that.