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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR Lujan, B.

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

2/26/07

HB 1087

SHORT TITLE Property Tax Transfer Affidavit & Protests

SB

ANALYST Earnest

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY07

FY08

NFI

NFI

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Taxation and Revenue Department (TRD)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Bill 1087 amends sections of the tax code governing the administration and enforcement

of property taxes to allow the release of residential property transfer affidavits for a county

valuation protest board hearing. The bill declares an emergency.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

None identified.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

Current law only allows the use of the affidavits for analytical and statistical purposes in the

application of appraisal methods. House Bill 1087 allows the release of the affidavit for a county

valuation protest hearing if the information is material to resolving the dispute.

House Bill 1087 – Page

2

Property transfer affidavits contain:

1.

the complete names of all transferors and transferees;

2.

the current mailing addresses of all transferors and transferees;

3.

the legal description of the real property interest transferred as it appears in the document

of transfer;

4.

the full consideration, including money or any other thing of value, paid or exchanged for

the transfer and the terms of the sale including any amount of seller incentives; and

5.

the value and a description of personal property that is included in the sale price.

The bill does not specify to whom the affidavit shall be released.

Paragraph C of the section states that the “county assessor shall retain the original affidavit as a

confidential record and as proof of compliance. . . ." It appears this bill would alter

confidentiality of the affidavit if released for a county valuation protest hearing.

ADMINSTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS

TRD indicates that the bill would impose no significant administrative costs on the department or

local governments and would improve administration of the property tax system. The measure

would provide county assessors and representatives of the Property Tax Division, who serve on

county protest boards, with improved information on which to base their decisions."

TECHNICAL ISSUES

According to TRD, the preamble of this bill is directed toward using a residential tax protestant’s

affidavit to resolve that protestant’s valuation issues in a hearing if it contains information

material to resolving the dispute. “Material" is not defined.

TRD:

Information used to determine a protested value is intended to be available to both parties

in a protest hearing. This raises several issues relating to confidentiality that will have to

be resolved:

•

First, it is unclear if, in cases where sales affidavits from other property transfers

are used in determining assessed value of a protestant’s property, those affidavits

would available to the protestant through the discovery process.

•

Second, since county valuation protest board hearings are public, it is unclear

whether releasing any affidavit would violate confidentiality statutes of the law as

modified by the proposed measure.

•

Third, it is unclear if an assessor would be able use an affidavit filed between

January 2004 and when the proposed measure is enacted, since those affidavits

were filed with the expectation of confidentiality.

BE/csd