Jacob Moore / jacob@chronline.com
A recently approved property tax adjustment means a national corporation with locations in Lewis County will pay hundreds of thousands less in property taxes this year.
In early August, Lewis County Assessor Ross Nielson signed an agreement with Darigold Inc. to adjust the county’s property value assessment of the company's manufacturing facility located at 67 SW Chehalis Ave. The change reduces the value of the building in the county’s eyes by more than $70 million, significantly lowering the company's property tax burden for 2025, according to documents acquired by The Chronicle through a public records request.
According to Nielson, the county is currently working on a settlement with Darigold Inc. concerning prior tax years, noting that Darigold Inc. has filed tax appeals with the Lewis County Board of Equalization, the Washington state Board of Tax Appeals and even in superior court in recent years. Nielson did not say if the agreed property value reduction was part of a legal settlement with the business.
Nonetheless, the action reduces the official county assessed value of the property from approximately $97 million as originally assessed in 2024 to just over $22.5 million. With the company paying property taxes on the holding of just over $8 per $1,000 of assessed value, according to the Lewis County parcels website, the company will likely pay almost $600,000 less in property taxes in 2025 for that property.
The Lewis County parcels site now shows the property taxes owed for the property as just over $180,000, and a quick calculation shows that the property would have incurred upward of $750,000 in property taxes before the reduction.
According to Nielson, companies going though the appeals process is not unusual; however, going as far as superior court is more rare. He added that during the process property owners often present information the county doesn’t have, such as proof of damages, repairs or needed maintenance.
“We’re trying to come up with the correct value for the property,” Nielson said. “So this is the case with some other properties that bring us some information that we didn’t have.”
While the company owns six other real property parcels in the county, none appear to have been subject to a significant value reassessment, and none incur property taxes of more than $2,000 a year. The company also owns at least two pieces of personal property — mobile machinery, equipment or furniture associated with the enterprise — that incur property tax.
The property value reduction that will have such a major impact on the corporation’s tax burden seems to have been in the works for some time as Darigold Inc. filed a notice to Lewis County in April that it would be paying the property taxes it owes to the county “involuntarily,” officially known as being “paid under protest.” That action leaves the door open for the business to challenge the property value assessments and taxes, whether through the Lewis County Board of Equalization, Washington State Board of Tax Appeals or superior court.
In the notice of payment under protest, Darigold Inc. specifically alleges that the 2024 property value assessments from Lewis County for all of its nine properties in the county’s jurisdiction were excessive and violated state and federal law.
“The county's action in collecting taxes based on this illegal, erroneous and excessive assessment violates the uniformity and equal protection requirements of the Washington and United States Constitutions, the property tax provisions of the Revised Code of Washington, and the rules, policies, and procedures promulgated thereunder,” the notice reads.
As part of the letter to the county, the corporation included a list of errors it believes Lewis County to have committed in its assessments of the nine properties. Among the nine errors, it alleges the county failed to perform correctly and accurately, to consider relevant market data, consider obsolescence affecting the property and much more.
Along with the notice of payment under protest, the corporation submitted the first installment of its property tax payments for 2025 for all of its nine properties in the county using a check for more than $400,000. It’s unclear how much the company will owe in total property taxes for 2025.
Darigold Inc. did not respond to a request for further comment on the issue.
