By: Robjamco | Original Article at
(REPRINTED)
New Parcel Tax Requirements for 2015-16
State Controller’s Office Reporting Changes
By Danielle Wood, Associate Director, NBS
Over the last decade, hundreds of parcel taxes have been imposed by local agencies throughout the State. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, voters approved approximately 180 parcel tax measures to fund a variety of improvements and services provided by cities, counties and special districts between 2001 and 2012. In addition, school districts approved approximately 135 measures during the same time period.
In an effort to provide transparency on the increasingly popular use of parcel taxes, recent legislation has been passed that imposes new requirements on governmental entities to annually report specific parcel tax information no later than the end of January. The reporting requirement applies to most parcel taxes placed on the county secured property tax roll starting with the 2015-16 Fiscal Year.
Parcel Tax defined:
Government code 12463.2 defines “parcel tax” to mean a tax levied by a local agency upon any parcel of property identified using the assessor’s parcel number system, or upon any person as an incident of property ownership pursuant to the California Constitution (Section 4 of Article XIII A) that is collected via the annual property tax bill.
The State Controller’s Office (SCO) provides this definition on their website:
“For purposes of reporting under AB 2109, a parcel tax, per Government Code section 12463.2, is defined as a non-ad valorem tax imposed as an incident of property ownership and collected on the annual property tax bill. Generally, the tax is charged on a parcel of property based on either a flat per parcel rate or a variable rate depending on the size, use and/or number of units on the parcel. A parcel tax includes, but is not limited to, all types of Mello-Roos taxes and special taxes for governmental purposes such as libraries, hospitals, schools, protection services, fire protection, ambulance services, parks, or museums.”
The above definition does state that all Mello-Roos taxes and special taxes for the purposes of schools shall be defined as a parcel tax: oddly enough however, reporting is not required in the case where a school district or state agency is the tax levying agency.
Reporting requirements:
The SCO states that parcel taxes should be reported on the annual Financial Transactions Report (FTR), but that this new reporting should be separate from the revenue section of the FTR. The reporting forms have been provided on the SCO website. The forms request information for the following six items:
• Type and rate of parcel tax imposed
• Number of parcels subject to the parcel tax
• Number of parcels exempt from the parcel tax
• Sunset date of the parcel tax
• Amount of revenue received from the parcel tax
• The manner in which the revenue received from the parcel tax is being used
For further technical information, refer here. If you require assistance, you may contact Danielle Wood.