Centorino v. Tewksbury Township

18 N.J. Tax 303
CourtNew Jersey Tax Court
DecidedOctober 25, 1999
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 18 N.J. Tax 303 (Centorino v. Tewksbury Township) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Jersey Tax Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Centorino v. Tewksbury Township, 18 N.J. Tax 303 (N.J. Super. Ct. 1999).

Opinion

AXELRAD, J.T.C.

This is a local property tax matter in which the taxpayer has challenged the property tax assessment on Block 27, Lot 50.01,. also known as 102 Old Driftway Lane, Tewksbury Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, for the 1998 tax year. The assessment was as follows:

Land $182,600

Improvements 419,300

Total $601,900

The taxpayer’s attorney filed an appeal with the Hunterdon County Board of Taxation, dated August 24, 1998. The petition and filing fee were returned along with a county board judgment of dismissal which was entered on September 9, 1998, indicating Judgment Code “5E” (“appeal not timely filed”), and a cover letter dated September 11,1998 from the county board tax administrator referencing N.J.A.C. 18:12A-1.20, which prohibits the county board from accepting a petition received after April 1 of the tax year. The taxpayer.then filed this complaint to the Tax Court on October 22,1998.

The taxpayer purchased the subject property on or about September 26, 1997. At that time the tax assessment for the subject property was $492,100 as set forth on the third and fourth quarter 1997 tax bills. According to the certification of the tax assessor, he received a copy of the deed indicating the sale to taxpayer in “late September or early October 1997[and] did not immediately change the ownership listing after receipt of this deed due to the fact that the computer program advised [him] that this property should be field investigated due to the fact that the assessment to sales ratio was under 85%.” As of January 1998 his assessor’s field book still had the prior owners, Victoria and [307]*307Donald Tourville, listed as owners of the subject property, even though the property was actually owned by the taxpayer at that time. The assessor did not actually change the ownership information of the property on the municipal tax list until sometime in January of 1999.

Although the property had been assessed at $492,100 for the 1997 tax year, the assessor set the assessment at $601,900 for the 1998 year, prior to certifying and sending the 1998 assessment is to the county in January 1998. According to the assessor’s certification, Vital Computer Services (“Vital”), a company under contract with the Division of Taxation and the county board of taxation, sends out notices of the current assessment to each taxpayer in the municipality at the request of the Hunterdon County Board of Taxation, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 54:4-38.1 (“Chapter 75 notices”). The statement from the Hunterdon County Board of Taxation Administrator submitted by the municipality’s counsel indicates that on January 30, 1998, Vital sent out a bulk mailing of 2,803 pieces for the municipality, which presumably were the Chapter 75 notices. Counsel for the municipality advised the court that a representative of Vital informed her that Vital no longer had a listing of all the individuals to whom these notices were sent. The municipality submits that a notice was sent to the correct address but with the previous owner’s name, not Mrs. Centorino’s. The assessor certified that if any of the old notices are undeliverable, they are returned to the Hunterdon County Board of Taxation and placed in a folder for Tewskbury Township, that he checks the folder at least once a week, and that the subject postcard was not returned.

The taxpayer certified that she did not receive the Chapter 75 notice and the first and only notification that she received that her assessment was higher for the 1998 tax year was a tax bill for 1998/1999 that was received by her on or after August 1, 1998, indicating that the assessed value of the property had been increased from $492,100 for 1997, to $601,900 for 1998. The taxpayer further certified that when she and her husband contacted the assessor immediately thereafter, the assessor told her that [308]*308the assessment was changed “because the assessor had concluded that there had been a mistake in the assessment for 1998, and for several years before that.”

On August 24,1998, the taxpayer’s counsel filed an appeal of the 1998 assessment to the county board with a letter indicating:

I recognize this appeal is being filed subsequent to April 1, 1998. It is my clients [sic] position that the assessment was changed and that the only notice of the change received by my client was his receipt of the tax bill within the past 45 days. You will note that N.J.S.A. 54:3-21 provides that ‘a taxpayer shall have 45 days to file an appeal upon the issuance of a notification of a change in assessment.’ Since my client first received a notification of the change of assessment within the past 45 days, we believe the Petition of Appeal is timely. We substantially alledge [sic] ‘Spot Assessment.’

As previously stated, the appeal was rejected as untimely filed and a complaint was filed with this court.

On April 7, 1999, the municipality’s attorney filed a notice of motion for summary judgment to dismiss the taxpayer’s complaint for untimely filing pursuant to N.J.S.A. 54:3-21, which requires an appeal to the county tax board to be filed no later than April 1 of the tax year. The municipality initially, for purposes of the motion only, conceded a failure to mail the Chapter 75 notice, but after inquiry by the court and further investigation rescinded that concession and supplied additional information to support its claim that notice was sent to the correct address, but to the previous owner, not the taxpayer. Furthermore, the municipality submits that although N.J.S.A. 54:3-21.4 permits the county board to extend the time for appeal beyond April 1 whenever an assessor fails to mail a Chapter 75 notice, at the time of the filing of the motion the taxpayer had made no written application requesting an extension of time to appeal. Even if the taxpayer had done so, the municipality submits that N.J.S.A. 54:3-21.5 provides that “reasonable extensions” may be granted up to a maximum of thirty days from the date otherwise provided by law. Therefore, since an extension could only have been made pursuant to the statute from the April 1 filing deadline to May 1, and the taxpayer did not file its petition of appeal until August 24, the municipality submits that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear this matter.

[309]*309By letter dated April 21, 1999, triggered by the municipality’s motion to dismiss, the taxpayer’s attorney sent a formal request to the county board and Division to nunc pro tunc extend the filing deadline for forty five days from the date of mailing of the August 1, 1998 tax bills. The municipality opposed the request on the basis that there was no authority for a nunc pro tunc application for extension and that the April 1999 request was untimely. Alternatively, it submitted that the Director did not have the authority to grant an extension past May 1,1998. By letter dated June 11, 1999, the Assistant Director, Division of Taxation advised the taxpayer’s counsel in writing that “inasmuch as the appeal is currently pending before the Tax Court, and not before the Hunterdon County Board of Taxation, there is no basis for granting” taxpayer’s request for an extension of the 1998 deadline for filing a tax appeal to the county board.

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Bluebook (online)
18 N.J. Tax 303, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/centorino-v-tewksbury-township-njtaxct-1999.