Mays v. Commissioner of Revenue
| Decision Date | 15 May 2001 |
| Docket Number | 7279 |
| Parties | Deloris MAYS and Sammy Mays, Appellants, v. COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE, Appellee. |
| Court | Tax Court of Minnesota |
The Honorable Kathleen H. Sanberg, Judge of the Minnesota Tax Court, heard the Commissioner’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction on April 19, 2001 at the Hennepin County District Court facilities in the Minneapolis City Hall, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Appellants appeared pro se.
Bradley S. Delapena, Assistant Attorney General, represented the appellee, Commissioner of Revenue (“Commissioner”).
The matter was submitted to the Court for decision of April 19, 2001.
The Court, having heard and considered the evidence adduced at the hearing, and upon all of the files, records and proceedings herein, now makes the following:
ORDER
The Commissioner's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction is hereby granted.
IT IS SO ORDERED. THIS IS A FINAL ORDER.
Appellants challenge the Commissioner's denial of a rebate for property taxes for failure to timely file the request for the rebate. The issue is whether this Court has jurisdiction over Appellants' claim for a property tax refund because it was not filed by the statutory deadline.
On April 15, 1999, Appellants filed a 1996 property tax refund claim, form M-1PR, supported by a Certificate of Rent Paid 1996, form CRP. In a Notice dated July 20, 1999, the Commissioner disallowed the refund because the application was not filed within the one-year time limit allowed by state law. Appellants requested administrative review stating that the delay in filing was caused by the failure of the landlord to deliver the rent certificate forms until 1998. On July 12 2000, the Commissioner affirmed the disallowance of Appellants' refund claim by Notice of Determination on Appeal. Appellants then filed the present appeal with this Court on August 21, 2000.
The Commissioner filed a motion to dismiss, heard on December 20, 2000. We granted the motion and entered an Order for Dismissal on January 2, 2001, based in part, upon Appellants' failure to appear. This Order provided that Appellants could reinstate the appeal upon the filing of a motion for reinstatement, within ten days of the Appellants' receipt of the Order and upon showing good cause for the failure to appear.
Appellants subsequently reinstated the Appeal and the Commissioner reasserted the motion to dismiss. At the hearing on the motion, Appellants testified, as did their landlord and the landlord's manager, that the landlord did not deliver the rent certificates to Appellants in a timely manner. The landlord's manager testified that he mailed the forms in a timely manner to the Appellants in 1996, but he waited to mail the certificates to the Appellants until he knew that they had moved and left no forwarding address. Appellants never received the forms in 1996. The forms were not delivered to Appellants until 1998, but only after Appellants had repeatedly telephoned the landlord's manager to request the forms.
We now turn to the statute at issue in this matter. The right to obtain a rebate for property taxes for renters in Minnesota was created by the Minnesota Legislature under Minn.Stat § 290A.04 (1998). That right was limited by a deadline by which to claim the rebate. Minn.Stat. § 289A.18, subd. 5 (1998) states:
A claim for a refund based on property taxes payable must be filed with the commissioner on or before August 15 of the year in which the property taxes are due and payable. Any claim for refund based on rent paid must be filed on or before August 15 of the year following the year in which the rent was paid.
Minn.Stat. § 289A.18, subd. 5 (1998)
Thus, the initial due date for filing Appellants' 1996 claim was August 15, 1997.
The statute also provides for a late-filing deadline, stating: “No claim is allowed if the initial claim is filed more than one year after the original date for filing the claim.” Minn.Stat. § 289A.60, subd. 12(e). In this case, the statutory late-filing deadline was August 17, 1998.[1] Thus, the filing of Appellants' 1996 property tax refund claim was over one year beyond the applicable statutory late-filing deadline and two years beyond the initial filing deadline.[2]
We believe that Appellants' delay in filing their claim was caused by their landlord's failure to timely deliver the CRP forms. Although dismissal of this claim...
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