|
Home: Executive
Office: Assessment Appeals
Assessment Appeals
The Board of Supervisors has created Assessment Appeals Boards
to sit as the Board of Equalization for the County of Los Angeles.
On behalf of the Board of Supervisors, the Assessment Appeals
Boards and individual Assessment Hearing Officers conduct hearings
on property assessment disputes between taxpayers and the County
Assessor in order to establish the assessed value of real and
personal property on the County property tax roll. Acting in a
judicial capacity, and acting on the basis of relevant evidence
submitted at these hearings and on the laws pertaining thereto,
it is the Appeals Boards' mission to make fair and impartial decisions
regarding these disputes.
With the decline in the real estate market in the mid-1990s,
this division saw a concomitant increase in the number of appeals
filed by taxpayers seeking a reduction in assessed value. Over
the 1996 and 1998 appeal periods, more than 210,000 appeals were
filed with this office. This division was able to meet the demands
of the overwhelming workload, and worked together to resolve the
appeals before a statutory two-year deadline where the taxpayer's
opinion of value would be the value against which property taxes
would be levied. This division thereby prevented the loss of millions
of dollars of County property tax revenue by resolving appeals
before they defaulted to the taxpayer's opinion of value.
The Assessment Appeals Division perhaps has more direct contact
and impact on the public than any other unit in the Executive
Office and provides the following services:
- Supports five Assessment Appeals Boards and more than twenty
Assessment Hearing Officers.
- Provides assistance and information to taxpayers, ranging
from homeowners and small business owners to multi-billion
dollar corporations, on their appeal rights; how to properly
complete an application; and how to prepare their case for
hearing.
- Clerks the Assessment Appeals Boards and assists the Boards
in preparing written findings of fact and conclusions of law
on complex appeal cases.
- Prepares and sends notices of the Boards' decisions and
provides any additional information or explanation of those
decisions that the taxpayer may require.
- Works with the State Board of Equalization in drafting State
and local rules governing assessment appeal procedures and
hearings, designing State forms intended for use in the local
appeal process, and in refining issues of law as they pertain
to the local process.
Starting
the Appeals Process
|
