Oregon Administrative Rules › Chapter 150 - DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE › Division 311 - COLLECTION OF PROPERTY TAXES › Section 150-311-0140 - What Is a Clerical Error

Current through Register Vol. 63, No. 7, July 1, 2024
(1)
			 Clerical errors are those procedural or recording errors which do not require
			 the use of judgment or subjective decision making for their correction. A
			 clerical error is an arithmetic or copying error or an omission on the roll or
			 misstatement of property value that is apparent from assessor office records
			 without speculation or conjecture, assumption or presumption, and that is
			 correctable without the use of appraisal judgment or the necessity to view the
			 property.
(2) Clerical errors are
			 those which, had they been discovered by the assessor prior to the
			 certification of the assessment and tax roll of the year of assessment, would
			 have been corrected as a matter of course.
(3) An error is a clerical error or omission
			 on the roll if all the facts necessary to correct the error or omission on the
			 roll are contained in the records and could be readily determined by an
			 impartial person examining these records.
(a)
			 Records include, but are not limited to, field notes, the assessment roll, tax
			 cards, deeds, vouchers and appraisal cards and jackets, which are regularly
			 maintained by the assessor's office and used to determine value.
Example1: "A" owns a parcel of land with a
			 house on it. "A" divides the land and sells part to "B," but retains that part
			 of the land with the house. The assessor places the value of the house on "B's"
			 land. The value of the house was placed upon the wrong tax lot. It was not, in
			 the words of 311.207 "from any cause been omitted, in whole or in part, from
			 assessment and taxation on the current assessment and tax rolls ..." It's on
			 the roll but on the wrong account. Thus, the property was never actually
			 omitted from the roll but clerically placed on the wrong parcel of land.
This comes within the definition of clerical error because it
				can be corrected solely from the records of the assessor as these records
				reflect the correct situation which, if discovered by the assessor before
				certification of the assessment and tax roll, would have been corrected as a
				matter or course and is correctable without the use of appraisal judgment or
				the necessity to view the property.
Example 2: A tract of land was zoned
			 agricultural prior to April. Late in April of the same year, this property was
			 rezoned to residential, appraised, and billed accordingly. In July of the same
			 year, the Planning Commission again caused the property to be rezoned to
			 agricultural. When it was reappraised in a later year, the appraiser overlooked
			 the rezoning and appraised the tract on the basis of a residential zone, thus
			 giving it a higher valuation.
Evidence shows that at the last appraisal the appraisal jacket
				of the taxpayer's property had the residential zone still on the outside but
				that there was a note inside of the appraisal jacket indicating the
				agricultural zoning. Had the appraiser looked inside of the jacket, the
				appraiser would have seen the latest rezoning note and would not have relied on
				the residential zone on the outside of the jacket.
This comes within the definition of clerical error because it
				can be corrected solely from the records of the assessor as these records
				reflect the correct situation which, if discovered before certification of the
				assessment and tax roll, would have been corrected as a matter of course. The
				correction can be made without the use of appraisal judgment or the necessity
				to view the property because the correct value (i.e., value based on an
				agricultural zone) appears in the records of the assessor.