Request By:
Donald E. Skeeters
Skeeters and Bennett
Attorneys at Law
705 North Dixie Boulevard
Radcliff, Kentucky 40160
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By William S. Riley, Assistant Attorney General
In your recent letter to the Attorney General it is stated that the City of Radcliff assessed property for tax purposes using the county assessment of the Hardin County Property Valuation Administrator.
During the tax year 1978 real property at a certain location within the city limits was assessed as if it did not have any improvements. The property did have newly constructed improvements on it. Are the improvements omitted property under KRS 132.290, 132.310 and 132.330? If it is omitted property, may the property valuation administrator now assess the newly constructed improvements as omitted property?
In some cases property owners have been in the process of building several apartment buildings on the same piece of real property. The property valuation administrator assessed some of the buildings but failed to assess all of the buildings. Can the buildings that are not assessed be considered as omitted property and be assessed as such for tax year 1978?
KRS 132.290 states that any property which has not been listed for taxation for any year in which it is taxable by the time the board of assessment appeals completes its work for that year shall be deemed omitted property. In
Thomas' Executrix v. Commonwealth, 308 Ky. 695, 215 S.W.2d 546 (1948), the Kentucky Court of Appeals pointed out that "omitted property" as contemplated by our statutes is property which has not been assessed at all. It does not mean that property which by mistake and in good faith has been assessed in the wrong county on the belief that it was located in that county may be treated as omitted property.
In
Kentucky Tax Commission v. Airlene Gas Company, Ky., 328 S.W.2d 832, 833 (1958), where a corporation reported it accounts receivable for ad valorem tax purposes at a lower valuation than the accounts were reported for corporate income tax purposes, the difference in the listed valuation was a case of "undervalued property" and not "omitted property". Also see the case of
Palmer v. Beadle County, 15 N.W.2d 6, 7, 70 S.D. 99 (1944), where it was held that a lot was not "omitted property" where the assessor undervalued the lot because of erroneously not including the building erected thereon.
Failure of the property valuation administrator to include improvements on real property listed for the year 1978 does not permit the assessment of such property as omitted property. Such assessment is merely an undervaluation of the property which should be corrected in the next assessment. The same answer is applicable where the property valuation administrator assessed part of the buildings located on real property but did not assess all of them for the year 1978.