Court Opinion

ID: 9584759
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:52:25.290996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:08.477732
License: Public Domain

*746Ruffin, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur fully with Division 2 of the majority opinion, holding that the Garden Center does not qualify as a “purely public charity” so as to be entitled to an exemption from ad valorem taxation. I also agree that the trial court erred in relying on the Garden Center’s equal protection argument as a basis for its ruling, but write separately to express my reasoning on this issue.3
In Camp v. Boggs, 240 Ga. 127, 128 (1) (239 SE2d 530) (1977), the Supreme Court noted that Code Ann. § 92-6912 (5) (A) (now OCGA § 48-5-311 (e) (1)) allowed a taxpayer, in an appeal to a county board of equalization, to raise “ ‘matters of taxability, uniformity of assessment, and value.’ ” The Court further noted that (1) the statute required the notice of appeal to “ ‘specifically state the grounds for appeal,’ ” (2) the board of equalization was required to specifically decide in writing all questions presented to it, and (3) the statute allowed the taxpayer to appeal decisions of the board of equalization to the superior court. Id. The Supreme Court construed the statute to mean that a taxpayer may not, in an appeal to the superior court, assert a different basis for appeal from that raised before the board of equalization. Thus, for example, where the sole, issue presented to the board of equalization is the taxability of the subject property, the taxpayer may not raise the separate issue of uniformity of assessments in a de novo appeal to the superior court.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Camp, the statute has been amended to delete the requirement that a notice of appeal to the board of equalization “ ‘specifically state the grounds for appeal.’ ” See Ga. L. 1990, pp. 1361-1362, § 1. The statute now provides that
[a] written objection to an assessment of real property received by a county board of tax assessors stating the location of the real property and the identification number, if any, contained in the tax notice shall be deemed a notice of appeal by the taxpayer under the grounds listed in paragraph (1) of this subsection [i.e., taxability, uniformity of assessment, and value].
(Emphasis supplied.) OCGA § 48-5-311 (e) (2) (A). Under the current statute, therefore, where a taxpayer files a proper notice of appeal without specifying the grounds for the appeal, the notice of appeal is deemed to raise each of the three statutory grounds.
*747In this case, however, the notice of appeal filed by the Garden Center clearly indicated that the only ground for appeal was the tax-ability of the subject property. The Garden Center admits in its appellate brief that its appeal to the board of equalization was based on the issue of taxability. Moreover, its notice of appeal to the superior court also indicated that the only issue raised was taxability. Accordingly, it is clear that the only issue presented to the board of equalization for decision was the taxability of the subject property.
The Garden Center concedes that, under Camp, a taxpayer may not appeal to the board of equalization based on one of the three statutory grounds and then raise a different ground on appeal to the superior court. However, it asserts that its equal protection argument in fact relates to the issue of taxability that was presented to the board of equalization. This assertion is without merit.
Reduced to its essence, the Garden Center’s equal protection argument is as follows: (1) regardless of whether the Garden Center meets the criteria for a “purely public charity’ as set forth in York Rite Bodies &c. of Savannah v. Bd. of Equalization of Chatham County, 261 Ga. 558 (2) (408 SE2d 699) (1991), two other entities in allegedly similar circumstances were previously approved for tax-exempt status by the Cobb County Board of Tax Assessors; (2) by not giving the Garden Center tax-exempt status, the board of tax assessors unlawfully treated the Garden Center differently from similarly situated taxpayers. The success or failure of the Garden Center’s equal protection argument thus turns not on whether the Garden Center in fact meets the criteria for a “purely public charity,” but on whether it is unlawful to treat the Garden Center differently from other similarly situated taxpayers. It is thus clear that the Garden Center’s equal protection argument is in fact a challenge to the uniformity of the Board’s assessments rather than to the taxability of the Garden Center’s property. The fact that the equal protection argument is couched in constitutional terms does not change the analysis, as county boards of equalization are authorized to consider constitutional challenges to tax assessments. See Vann v. DeKalb County Bd. of Tax Assessors, 186 Ga. App. 208, 210 (1) (367 SE2d 43) (1988). As the Supreme Court noted in Delta Air Lines v. Coleman, 219 Ga. 12, 19 (4) (131 SE2d 768) (1963),
[t]he discrimination in taxation which the equal protection clauses forbid is the failure of the taxing authorities to tax all like property which is subject to taxation equally or to tax the property of one owner and exempt like property belonging to another owner.
That the Garden Center’s equal protection argument does not in *748fact go to the taxability of its property is made more clear when we consider that
Decided August 30, 1999
Haynie & Litchfield, Douglas R. Haynie, Emilie K. Petrovich, for appellant.
Moore, Ingram, Johnson & Steele, John H. Moore, J. Kevin Moore, for appellee.
county boards of equalization have ample authority to remedy deficiencies in the uniformity of assessments required . by the Constitution, including the authority to order the entire digest recompiled if such action is necessary to obtain uniformity.
Butts County v. Briscoe, 236 Ga. 233, 235 (1) (223 SE2d 199) (1976). See also OCGA § 48-5-311 (d) (2). Thus, even if the Garden Center could show that it was treated differently from a similarly situated taxpayer, this would not automatically lead to the conclusion that its property was not taxable. As the majority correctly notes in Division 2, the Garden Center does not meet the criteria for a purely public charity as laid down by the Supreme Court in York Rite Bodies, supra. Had the Garden Center raised the issue of uniformity before the board of equalization, and established that it was treated differently from other similarly situated taxpayers, the Board could have remedied the situation by reexamining the taxability of the other taxpayers’ property, rather than by giving the Garden Center an unauthorized tax exemption.
Because the Garden Center’s equal protection argument is in fact a challenge to the uniformity of the Board’s assessments rather than a challenge to the taxability of the subject property, and because the issue of uniformity was not presented to the board of equalization for decision, I agree with the majority that the trial court erred in considering such issue in ruling on the parties’ motions for summary judgment.

 Contrary to the Garden Center’s contention, I believe this issue, which was addressed in the Board’s brief, comes within the scope of the Board’s first enumeration of error, which contends that it was entitled to summary judgment because the Garden Center was not a purely public charity.