3 Or. Tax 271 | Or. T.C. | 1968
Decision rendered for defendant September 13, 1968. *272 Plaintiff's petition to the tax commission for review of the valuation of certain real property for the year 1967 was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Plaintiff appealed.
A brief review of the facts is necessary in order to determine whether the commission had jurisdiction to consider plaintiff's petition.
In 1966 the plaintiff, being dissatisfied with the valuation of $596,000 placed on its property by the Linn County Assessor, appealed to the board of equalization. The latter made only a small reduction in the value and the plaintiff appealed to the tax commission. The commission held a hearing on September 8, 1966, but the opinion and order of the commission reducing the value of plaintiff's property to $451,885 was not issued until January 31, 1968.
Before the commission had issued its opinion and order on plaintiff's 1966 appeal the tax year 1967 rolled around. The assessor placed a value of $511,600 on the property for 1967, which was a slight decrease from the value used for 1966. Had the assessor increased the 1967 value over the valuation for the preceding year by more than $400 or five percent, whichever was greater, the plaintiff would have been entitled to notice under ORS
1, 2. The county assessor is required to assess the value of all taxable property within the county as of January 1 of each year. ORS
The plaintiff seeks to invoke the provisions of ORS
3, 4. This statute is only applicable when the taxpayer has no other statutory remedy for presenting his grievance. Here the plaintiff should have protected itself by following the appeal procedure for each year involved until the tax commission made its decision. Filing appeals for each tax year while other appeals are pending before the commission, the Tax Court, or the Supreme Court, or all three, has been the required procedure. See R.L.K. and Co. v. Tax Commission,
The plaintiff argues that it did not appeal the assessor's 1967 valuation to the board of equalization because it did not have knowledge of the valuation until October, 1967, when it received its tax statement for the year 1967-68.
5. The plaintiff should have known that the assessor has the duty to prepare the assessment roll for the county for each year (ORS
Having failed to appeal the 1967 valuation to the board of equalization the plaintiff could not appeal the valuation for that year to the tax commission.
The order of the commission is affirmed. *275