Opinion ID: 2104074
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Comptroller's Form

Text: Taxing units must provide their truth-in-taxation notices in the form prescribed by the comptroller. Tex.Tax Code § 26.04(e); see also id. § 5.07. Every year, the comptroller provides these forms as part of a Truth in Taxation Guide that explains taxing units' truth-in-taxation obligations and highlights changes in the law. The District believes that the Comptroller's form authorizes the District's reporting method. It urges us to hold that, by amending Section 26.04 since the Comptroller published the form, the Legislature has accepted the administrative interpretation of the Tax Code suggested by the form. For two reasons, we cannot. First, the administrative construction of a statute must be clear before we will read that construction into the Legislature's reenactment of the statute. See Fleming Foods of Texas v. Rylander, 6 S.W.3d 278, 282 (Tex.1999); Sharp v. House of Lloyd, Inc., 815 S.W.2d 245, 248 (Tex.1991). Here, the meaning of the Comptroller's form is not clear. The part of the form in question has two columns, one headed Type of Property Tax Fund and the other Balance. Although the District believes that these headings require disclosure only of balances composed exclusively of property taxes, we do not read them so narrowly. The Constitution lists four uses to which cities and counties may put property taxes. See Tex. Const. art. VIII, § 9(b); see also id. art. IX, § 9 (requiring county hospital districts to use their tax revenues to care for needy county inhabitants). But taxing units routinely supplement the tax dollars they spend on these functions with non-tax revenue. The District, for example, spends both patient fees and tax receipts on maintenance and operations. The Comptroller's form does not compel the conclusion that a Property Tax Fund must contain exclusively property taxes. Instead, we find it more likely that a Property Tax Fund is one that may include property taxes, rather than one that may not, and that the Comptroller meant the form to ask whether any balance remains in such funds. Second, we will not deem the Legislature to have accepted even a clear administrative construction that conflicts with a statute's plain language or clear purpose. See Fleming Foods, 6 S.W.3d at 282; Tarrant Appraisal Dist. v. Moore, 845 S.W.2d 820, 823 (Tex.1993). Although Section 26.04(e) does require the Comptroller to create forms for taxing units to use in their truth-in-taxation disclosures, the statute does not authorize the Comptroller to change the substance of those disclosures. See Tex.Tax Code §§ 5.07, 26.04(e). As discussed above, we believe that the District's interpretation of Section 26.04 conflicts with the Legislature's evident purpose in enacting this section.