178 Iowa 468 | Iowa | 1916
Upon this record, should the assessment, even as reduced by the trial court, be permitted to stand? We confess to a very strong conviction- that, even upon the showing made by the appellee, the affirmance of the judgment below, would ,work a palpable miscarriage of justice. An assessor has only such power or authority as is conferred upon him by statute, and, so far as the same is pertinent to this case, it is found in the following sections of the Code:
“Sec. 1352. Each assessor shall enter upon the discharge of the duties of his office immediately after the second Monday in January in each year, and shall, with the assistance of each person assessed, or who may be required by law to list property belonging to another, enter upon the assessment rolls furnished him for that purpose the several - items of property required to be entered for assessment. He shall personally affix values to all property assessed by him.
“Sec. 3354. The assessor shall list every person in his township, and assess all the property, . . . therein, except such as is heretofore -exempted or otherwise assessed, and any person who shall refuse to assist in making out a list of his property, ... or who shall refuse to make tbc oath required by the next section, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined in a sum1 not to exceed five hundred dollars.
“Sec. 1355. The assessor shall administer the oath or. affirmation printed on the assessment rolls hereinafter prescribed to each person assessed, and require the person taking such oath to subscribe the same, and in ease anyone refuses so to do, he shall note the fact in the column of remarks opposite such person’s name.
*473 “Sec. 1356. The assessor shall, at the time of making the assessment, inform the person assessed, in writing, of the valuation put upon his property, and notify him, if he feels aggrieved, to appear before the board of review and show why the assessment should be changed.
“See. 1357. If any . . . person refuse to furnish the verified statements in this chapter required, or to list his property, or to take or subscribe the oath in this chapter required, the executive council, or assessor, as the case may be, shall proceed to list and assess such property according to the best information obtainable, and shall add to the taxable valuation one hundred per cent, thereof, which valuation and penalty shall be separately shown, and shall constitute the assessment; and if the valuation of such property shall be changed by any board of review, or on appeal therefrom, a like penalty shall be added to the valuation thus fixed.”
Section 1360, Code Supp., 1913, prescribes in detail the form of the assessment roll, to be made in duplicate, with appropriate blanks and columns in which each item of taxable property of the individual to be assessed shall be entered, followed by a blank affidavit or oath, to be signed and verified by him. The duplicate of such assessment roll, when finished, is to be delivered to the person assessed.
Section 1365, Code, 1897, provides that the work of assessment shall be completed by the first day of April.
Section 1305, Code Supp., 1913, requires all property subject to taxation to be valued at its actual value, which shall be entered opposite each item, and be assessed at 25 per cent of such actual value. Such assessed value shall be entered in its proper column opposite each item, and is to be taken and considered as the taxable value of such property.
By Sec. 661, Code Supp., 1913, a city assessor is charged with the same duties as are by law required of township
and offered to submit to assessment in the , , , regular manner, it was clearly an unwarranted assumption of authority on the part 0f the assessor to point him to the extravagant- peremptory assessment of $10,000 and penalty of $10,000, and deny his demand for an assessment of his property in the usual manner. It is admitted in the record that this offer or request was made at the office of the assessor on the 30th or 31st of March, 1914. This was within the period within which the assessor still had control of the books and records relating to that year’s assessments. | The entry which had been made against the plaintiff was not ,|a judgment, nor did it have the finality of a judgment. The M plaintiff had not in fact been assessed. It is not pretended that the assessor or deputy had any information or reason to believe that plaintiff’s goods were of a value of $10,000, or anywhere near it. On the contrary, the deputy himself says that, from the view he had of the contents of the shop on February 13th, he estimated the taxable property at about $3,100. This sum had been arbitarily tripled, and- then doubled by way of penalty. Having, by the voluntary act of the plaintiff within proper time, been given opportunity to remedy the injustice, it should have been done. In the case of Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. v. Town of Fonda, 114 Iowa 728, the plaintiff had refused to list its property, and a penalty was assessed. We refused to disturb such assessment because, as we there said, the failure to properly list the property “could not be remedied by making return to the assessor after the books were closed and placed before the board of review. ’ ’ The clear implication of that holding was that, if the owner had appeared to the assessor while the books were still open and in his hands, the assessment should have been made as asked, and the penalty expunged. It may be true that plaintiff was unnecessarily brusque or unman
Counsel for appellants raise the further question whether, under the statute authorizing a penalty of .100 per cent of the taxable value of the property, the sum assessed in this case is not in any event four times the amount authorized by law, the “taxable value” of the property being, under our statute, but one fourth of the assessed value. Having reached the conclusion that no penalty in any amount is authorized in this case, the point made ceases to be of any importance, and we do not attempt any construction of the statute with reference thereto.
But, for the other reasons already stated, we find that, nnder the facts shown, neither the deputy nor the principal assessor had any authority to assess the penalty against the plaintiff, and that the trial court erred in sustaining and confirming it. We do not understand appellant to be resisting the assessment as fixed by the board of review, except the penalty, and for this reason we do not consider or decide the question whether a legal assessment of any kind was made. We may suggest the thought, however, that, even if the assessor failed to make a valid assessment of the property, it was probably within the province of the hoard of review to supply the omission. The judgment below is therefore reversed and canse remanded for such further proceedings as may he necessary to correct the assessment to conform with the views herein expressed. — Reversed and Remanded.