Court Opinion

ID: 9616357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:46:03.131122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:09.782109
License: Public Domain

Judge Greene
dissenting.
The issue is not as the majority suggests, whether “ownership of the ELE, Inc., stock by E. R. Evans & Sons, Inc., for the brief period of time during the corporate reorganization in 1982, prohibits present[-]use value assessment and taxation . . .” The issue is whether either ELE, Inc., or any of its majority stockholders have either separately or in combination owned the property in question for four years prior to January 1 of the year for which ELE, Inc., claims present-use treatment. I determine that they have not.
ELE, Inc., claims present-use treatment for the years 1984-86. Thus, we must look to the four years preceding 1984-86 to determine ownership, 1980-83. ELE, Inc., acquired the property on 29 February 1984 from E. R. Evans & Sons, Inc., who had owned the property since 1962. The sole stockholder of ELE, Inc., as of 29 February 1984, the date of its creation, was E. R. Evans & Sons, Inc., who transferred its stock to Ernest L. Evans on *2592 March 1984. ELE, Inc., did not own the property a sufficient time to qualify for any of the years 1984, 1985 or 1986. Because E. R. Evans & Sons, Inc., is not a natural person, its ownership cannot be tacked onto ELE’s ownership to calculate the four-year ownership period. N.C.G.S. § 105-277.2(4)(b) (corporate-shareholder does not qualify as natural person). Furthermore, Ernest L. Evans’s ownership in E. R. Evans & Sons, Inc., is indirect and does not qualify for tacking his ownership onto his present ownership in ELE, Inc. The plain language of the statute requires actual ownership of the property by the corporate owner or by one of its principal shareholders. Id.
I believe that the statute is clear and unambiguous, and that the decision of the Property Tax Commission to grant the present-use valuation must be reversed because it was affected by an error of law. N.C.G.S. § 105-345.2(b)(4). To do otherwise would be to interpolate an exception, as the majority has done, into the clear language of the statute. Any exceptions should be left to the Legislature. See N.C.G.S. § 105-277.3(b) (exception to four-year requirement created for natural persons if property is the “owner’s place of residence”).