Laws, Regulations & Annotations

C

285.0000 CORRECTIONS

Annotation 285.0021

285.0021 Clerical Errors. A developer sold two parcels and inadvertently switched the parcel numbers on the grant deeds and the preliminary change of ownership reports, causing one parcel to be overassessed and the other to be underassessed. The property owners filed quitclaim deeds to correct the error. On one parcel, the assessor cancelled the incorrect assessment but failed to input the correct data. As a result, the computer system reverted back to the developer's factored base year value. The incorrect base year value remained on the property for five years until it was discovered. Since this was an error that did not involve an assessor's exercise of judgment as to value, the base year value can be corrected at any time the error is discovered pursuant to Revenue and Taxation Code section 51.5(a).

Section 4831 provides a separate four-year authorization for the assessor to correct any roll entries not resulting from an error in value judgment. The four-year statute of limitations for correcting roll errors is separate and distinct from that for base year value corrections and the issuance of escape assessments, and does not affect those limitation periods. Therefore, after correcting the base year value, four years of escape assessments were properly issued. C 12/1/2009.