Tidewater Oil Co. v. County Commissioners

Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Tidewater Oil Company and the Tidewater Oil Sales Corporation, on July 30th, 1930, filed with the ⁴⁹⁷ County Commissioners of Anne Arundel County, for tax assessment purposes, certain inventories of petroleum products belonging to those affiliated companies and stored in the county, which were therein “computed on a gallonage basis” to be worth $444,000. Upon the official assessment which adopted that valuation, and which continued without change in the absence of any requested modification, the companies paid in full and without objection the taxes levied for 1931, 1932, and 1933, the payments having been made by the Tidewater Oil Sales Company for the first and second, and by the Tidewater Oil Corporation for the last, of those years. In these consolidated actions they assert that, during 1931, 1932, and 1933, their petroleum products in Anne Arundel County had so far decreased in quantity and value that the taxes paid on the unchanged assessment greatly exceeded the amounts properly chargeable.

The appeal is from judgments for the defendant on demurrers to the declarations, which claimed refunds of the tax payments to the extent of the alleged excess. The assessment was made and continued in accordance with the following provisions of article 81 of Code Pub. Gen. Laws (Supp. 1929): “11.

Except as hereinafter provided, all property directed in this Article to be assessed, shall be assessed at the full cash value thereof on the date of finality. Any assessment existing on June 1, 1929, or thereafter made, shall continue in force from year to year until changed pursuant to the provisions of this Article. “12. The stock in business of every person, firm, foreign corporation, or domestic ordinary business corporation, engaged in commercial business in this State shall be valued and assessed at its fair average value during the twelve months preceding the date of finality, or the portion of such period during which such stock in business was held.” The phrase “date of finality,” as used in those sections, is defined by the Code to mean “the date as of which taxes are to be levied for the taxable year in question and upon ⁴⁹⁸ which, assessments become final for such year, subject only to correction as herein authorized.” Article 81, section 2(22). The county commissioners may correct assessments annually (article 81, section 89), but, when a taxpayer applies “for an allowance or deduction on account of the sale, transfer, alienation, loss or removal of any property,” the commissioners “may interrogate him on oath in reference thereto and the disposal of the same,” and as to “any acquisitions or investments made by him and not already assessed * * * ” (article 81, section 40).

A hearing may be demanded by the taxpayer before the county commissioners as to the alteration of his assessments “for the next ensuing year,” and he may appeal from the action of the commissioners to the state tax commission, and from its decision, on a question of law, to the circuit court, and thence to the Court of Appeals. Article 81, sections 182-186. No effort was made by the appellant corporations to utilize their available rights and remedies for the reduction of the assessment for the periods to which their suits relate. But they rely upon the Code provision that county commissioners “shall, when satisfied that any error has arisen by assessing property not liable to be assessed, rectify such error and levy and pay to the proper person any money that may have been paid in consequence of such error” (article 25, section 10), and also upon section 153 of article 81 of the Code Pub.

Gen. Laws (Supp. 1929), which provides: “Whenever any person shall have erroneously or mistakenly paid to the County Commissioners of any of the counties of this State, or to the collector or treasurer for such County Commissioners, or to the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, or its collector, more money for taxes or other charges than was properly and legally chargeable to or collected from such person, the said County Commissioners and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore shall rectify the error and immediately levy and pay to such person any money that was so paid.” ⁴⁹⁹ It is conceded in the declarations that the assessment made in 1930, upon the basis of the plaintiffs’ own inventories, was correct, and therefore it could not be said to have involved any error in “assessing property not liable to be assessed” within the purview of section 10 of article 25 of the Code. Nor can the taxes levied upon the assessment, thus admittedly correct