Using GIS for tax asset allocation

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Using GIS for tax asset allocation

Robert A. Popoff
GeoForce
A subsidiary of Lost Time Control West, Inc.
12446 Willingdon Road
Huntersville, NC 28078

Paper

Definitions
Project Definitions

Tiger
The Project Name of the PSNC Energy GIS Project.
FLAME
The Project Name of the PSNC Energy Peoplesoft Project.

Tiger Definitions

Engineering
Used in this paper to represent the department that maintained the manual paper mapping system, and now maintains the TIGER system.
Tax District
A TIGER polygon (Area) feature, which represents a specific Tax District usually within a county.
Transmission Main
A linear feature, which represents a piece of pipe, that transmits high-pressure natural gas to areas where it is regulated and distributed to Distribution Mains.
Distribution Main
A linear feature, which represents a piece of pipe, that transmits lower pressure natural gas to Service Mains.
Service Mains
A linear feature, which represents a piece of pipe, that takes natural gas from the distribution main to the customer's meter.
Meters
A point feature, which represents the regulator and monitoring device, that takes natural gas from the service main to the customer's home or business.
Station
A point feature, which represents the regulating device, that distributes gas from Transmission Mains to Distribution Mains.
Right of Way
A polygon feature, which represents the area of land, that is bought or leased from a landowner who agrees to allow pipe (usually Transmission Pipe) to cross their land.
Building
A polygon feature that represents a structure owned by PSNC Energy.

Flame Definitions

Plant Accounting
The division of Accounting that is responsible for maintaining the assets costs for PSNC Energy.
Projects
The term used by Plant Accounting which group costs together logically based on when assets were installed and for what purpose.
Project File and Numbers
A sequential number which links a Plant Accounting Project with the assets installed by Engineering and maintained by TIGER

Background
For fiscal year 1999, PSNC Energy decided to use TIGER to allocate taxable asset costs across tax districts in its franchise territory, for the purpose of reporting taxable assets to the State of North Carolina. Replacing the old system of manually calculating new installation, retirements, and tax district boundary changes, a TIGER Application was implemented to both streamline and offer a more accurate means of calculating these costs. A project team was developed to coordinate the implementation of the new system. While this application was designed to reduce the number of hours the taxable asset reports for the State of North Carolina took to prepare, both FLAME and TIGER benefited in some surprising ways.