Court Opinion

ID: 9751075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:02:02.291447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:34.041381
License: Public Domain

Shea, J.
(dissenting and concurring). I disagree with the remand for dismissal of the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. I would find error in the judgment sustaining the appeal and direct a dismissal on the merits.
My disagreement is with the interpretation given to G-eneral Statutes § 12-12'ld as precluding an appeal where a penalty has been assessed under Greneral Statutes § 12-121b for failure of the owner to file a list of personal property within the time limit established by that statute. Although § 12-121d refers to “in the process of verification for purposes of assessment under section 12-121e” as the occasion for finding an owner’s report to be “unacceptable,” it is inconsistent with the broad *700language, “unacceptable for any reason,” to exclude a failure to file on time from the scope of the appeal provision.
In any event, a failure to file any return at all as well as an omission of certain property from a list which has been filed, either of which events would subject the owner to a penalty assessment under § 12-121b, would qualify under the “verification” limitation of the grounds for unaeceptability which this opinion imposes. The “process of verification” under § 12-121c, which is referred to in § 12-121d, is the duty of checking the accuracy of the list to be submitted to the tax commissioner of the owners, their personal property and the values thereof, “which would have been submitted to the local assessor for property tax purposes except for the application of section 12-121a.”1 In order to prepare such a list the assessors would have to verify (1) whether the owners who had submitted lists required under § 12-121b had included all taxable personal property and supplied the information required by the statute and (2) whether some owners who were obliged to file lists had failed to do so. Apparently it was “in the process of” this second kind of verification that the Hartford assessor discovered the presence of the two business machines owned by the plaintiff and situated at the Hartford National Bank. The consequences of that discovery, of course, resulted in the penalty tax.
*701I see no distinction between the first type of verification (i.e., checking the lists which have been filed) and the second type (i.e., checking to see whether a list has been filed for certain items of taxable property) so far as the availability of an appeal under § 12-12'ld is concerned. Nothing in the language of the statutes justifies such a distinction and it is difficult to see why the legislature would have intended to allow an appeal in the first situation and not in the second.
On the merits, I would reject the position of the trial court that the failure of the assessor to mail out the forms as provided in General Statutes § 12-43 excuses the failure of the taxpayer to file the required list by the November 1 deadline. The argument of the plaintiff that unless the assessors first sent the forms it would not have notice of the filing requirement established by § 12-43 disregards the familiar principle that every person, even a nonresident, is presumed to know the law. The plaintiff knew that its property was situated in Hartford and it was bound to observe all requirements of law which pertained thereto whether or not it had actual knowledge of them.

 The majority opinion appears to recognize this proposition: “The verification process, therefore, requires an assessor to ‘authenticate’ the list of owners, the extent of their property holdings, and the value of those holdings.” To say, however, as the opinion does, that “the date that the taxpayer files those forms is outside the verification process” overlooks the fact that the penalty imposed under § 12-121b results from the failure of the owner to file his property list by the date specified, a situation which the “verification process” was designed to discover.