Brown v. Montgomery County

Powers, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Owners of real estate in Montgomery County raise in this appeal the narrow question of whether taxes based upon an assessed valuation made final by the Supervisor of Assessments may be collected while an appeal from that assessment is pending. The issue was raised in a petition filed 18 September 1974 in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County by the property owners, styled as R. E. Brown individually and R. E. Brown and R. P. Brown, trustees under the will of Hatton D. Brown, against Montgomery County and its Director of Finance, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief. Numerous exhibits were attached to the petition.

The County responded in a pleading 1 which the parties agreed put the case in an appropriate posture to be decided as a matter of law. All of the facts were supplied in the pleadings and their attachments or were otherwise agreed to, and there was no dispute of any fact material to the issue. The significant facts are that the taxpayers received timely notice, late in 1972, of tentative assessments for the 1973 levy year of $12,380 and $1,980 on two contiguous parcels of unimproved timber land they owned. They filed a timely protest.

After a hearing before the Supervisor of Assessments in July 1973 on the protest, the Supervisor of Assessments entered the tentative assessments as the final assessments for the 1973 levy year. Taxpayers timely appealed to the Property Tax Assessment Appeal Board. When a tax bill for the levy year 1973 was rendered to the ¹⁰⁹ taxpayers based upon the increased assessment theretofore made final by the Supervisor of Assessments, and upon which an appeal was pending, the taxpayers failed to pay the bill. Because taxes for the levy year 1973 were delinquent, the property was sold at a tax sale on 10 June 1974.

By its order dated 1 July 1974, the Appeal Board reduced the assessments for the levy year 1973 to $830 and $220, respectively, on the two parcels of land involved. After the assessments on the property were reduced by the Property Tax Assessment Appeal Board, the county sent revised tax bills for the year 1973 to the taxpayers for the taxes calculated on the revised assessments and for interest and for tax sale redemption costs. The interest and costs on both parcels amounted in the aggregate to $51.04. The taxpayers refused to pay, and filed their petition in the Circuit Court for injunctive relief.

After a hearing on 20 December 1974 the Circuit Court, Mitchell, J., filed an order on 13 February 1975 dismissing the petition. This appeal was taken from that order. Appellants raise these questions in their brief: 1. Whether a change in assessment becomes final after the Supervisor of Assessments hears and decides an appeal of a proposed assessment or after a decision of the Property Tax Assessment Appeal Board? 2.

Whether the levy and tax sale conducted under a tentative assessment can result in the legal exaction of interest and penalties before a tax bill has been rendered based upon the final assessment as rendered by the Property Tax Assessment Appeal Board? Their brief concludes with the statement that “a taxpayer should be required to pay taxes based upon a final assessment only after exhaustion of his appeal rights”. The questions and the statement voice an understandable taxpayer grievance, but if the law were as appellants would have it, the capability of the taxing authority to perform its ¹¹⁰ public functions could be brought to a standstill by mass appeals. The potential harm of such a rule is intolerable to government.

The laws controlling the questions raised here are clear, and the case requires only that we apply them, for no interpretation is needed. Code, Art. 81, § 29A fixes the date of finality as January 1, (a); thé fiscal year as the period starting July 1, (b); and the taxable year as the period starting July 1, (c). Whenever any existing valuation of property for tax purposes shall be increased “it shall be the duty of the appropriate authority to notify the person against whom it is proposed to * * * increase * * * such valuation * * * by a written or printed notice, appointing a day for such person to make answer thereto or present such proof as he may desire in the premises.” § 29 (a). The notice must be served at least twenty days before the date of finality or the day of hearing.

Id. (b). He may appear and present such proofs and arguments as he may desire. Id.

(d). The end of that phase of the assessment process is covered by § 29 (g), which says: “Whenever an answer or protest is filed by any person as a result of the notice called for in subsection (a) of this section, or whenever a request for a change in an existing valuation is denied by a supervisor of assessments for the county or the department of assessments of Baltimore City, it shall be the duty of the appropriate authority to notify the person protesting or requesting a change in such valuation, by a written or printed notice, as to the final valuations so fixed by the supervisor of assessments for the county or the department of assessments of