Dade County v. Eldridge

• Decision Date: 17 November 1997
• Docket Number: No. A97A0931,A97A0931
• Citation: 229 Ga.App. 401,494 S.E.2d 106
• Parties: , 97 FCDR 4341 DADE COUNTY et al. v. ELDRIDGE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

Page 106

494 S.E.2d 106

229 Ga.App. 401, 97 FCDR 4341

DADE COUNTY et al. v. ELDRIDGE.

No. A97A0931.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

Nov. 17, 1997.

Herbert E. Franklin, Jr., District Attorney, for appellants.

Samples, Jennings & Pineda, Michael S. Pineda, Chattanooga, TN, for appellee.

POPE, Presiding Judge.

In 1991, a mass appraisal of all the residential property in Dade County, Georgia was conducted. During that appraisal, Janice Eldridge's property was assessed at $221,500. In 1995, Dade County's Chief Appraiser, Diane Burnette, reassessed Eldridge's property at $340,430, which resulted in a significant increase in the taxes on the property. Eldridge appealed the reassessment to the Dade County Board of Tax Assessors, who voted to turn the matter over to the Board of Tax Equalization, which in turn affirmed the reassessment. Subsequently, Eldridge appealed the Board of Equalization's ruling to the superior court. Thereafter, Eldridge filed a summary judgment motion, which the superior court granted. Dade County and both the Board of Tax Assessors and the Board of Equalization appeal. Concluding that summary judgment was proper, we affirm.

In this State, a key tenet of property tax law is that all taxes must be fairly apportioned, or equalized, among taxpayers. In this regard, OCGA § 48-5-306(a) provides that: "The board [of tax assessors] shall see that all taxable property within the county is assessed and returned at its fair market value and that fair market values as between individual taxpayers are fairly and justly equalized so that each taxpayer shall pay as nearly as possible only his proportionate share of taxes." In accordance with the above, the tax assessor must use the same standard or system to determine and fix the taxable value of all property of the same class so that the taxation of all property within that class will be uniform. See Champion Papers v. Williams, 221 Ga. 345, 144 S.E.2d 514 (1965); Colvard v. Ridley, 218 Ga. 490, 128 S.E.2d 732 (1962). Accordingly, it is illegal for a taxing authority simply to pick and choose particular pieces of property to assess and reassess without regard to uniformity, proportionality and equalization among properties of the same class.

In this case, the record shows that while riding through the county, Burnette came across Eldridge's property and, in looking at Eldridge's house, concluded that the house had been wrongly assessed. The only evidence as to how Burnette originally...