112 Cal. 593 | Cal. | 1896
Application for a writ of mandamus. The petitioner seeks by this proceeding to compel the respondent, who is the assessor of the city and county of San Francisco, to assess the property of the Market Street Railway Company as required by sections 3648 and 3649 of the Political Code, upon the ground that said property escaped assessment and taxation for the fiscal year commencing July 1, 1895, by reason of misrepresentations of the officers of said corporation as to the value of said property. It is alleged in the petition that the said corporation, on the first Monday of March, 1895, was, and thence hitherto has been, the owner of certain real and personal property situated in the city and county of San Francisco, subject to taxation, and
These sections of the Political Code are as follows;
“ Sec. 3648. Any property willfully concealed, removed, transferred, or misrepresented by the owner or*596 agent thereof to evade taxation, upon discovery, must be assessed at not exceeding ten times its value, and the assessment so made must not be reduced by the board of supervisors.”
“ Sec. 3649. Any property discovered by the assessor to have escaped assessment for the last preceding year, if such property is in the ownership or under the control of the same person who owned or controlled it for such preceding year, may be assessed at double its value.”
We are of the opinion that the facts presented by the petitioner herein do not authorize the application of either of these sections. It is not alleged that any “property” of the Market Street Railway Company “ escaped assessment” for the fiscal year ending July 1, 1895, or that any of its property was concealed, removed, or transferred by it to evade taxation for that year, or that there has been any “ discovery” of any property that was not assessed for that fiscal year. On the contrary, it is alleged that the property of said corporation was assessed by the respondent for that fiscal year, and, in .the absence of any qualifying clause, this must be held to include all of its property. The further allegation, that the amount at which it was assessed was caused by the willful misrepresentation of its value by the officers and agents of the corporation, is not equivalent to a charge that the corporation, or any of its officers or agents, made any misrepresentation of the property itself. The statute does not require, or even authorize, the owner of property to make any representation to the assessor of its value, and it is not to be assumed that the legislature intended that the owner should be visited with a penalty for a misrepresentation in reference to a matter upon which it had not authorized or required him to make any representation whatever.
By section 3629 of the Political Code the assessor is authorized to demand from the owner of property a statement containing a list of all the property owned by him on the first Monday of March preceding, and by
The assessment of property for the purposes of taxation is a function of the executive department of government, but the proceeding contemplated by the petition herein would transfer that function to the judicial department of the government. In order to determine whether there had been any misrepresentation of the value of the property, it would be necessary to ascertain its actual value, and for a court to enter upon this investigation would be to step beyond the boundaries of
The writ is denied.
Garoutte, J., and Van Fleet, J., concurred.