Shell Oil Co. v. Supervisor of Assessments

366 A.2d 369, 278 Md. 659, 1976 Md. LEXIS 663
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedDecember 7, 1976
Docket[No. 73, September Term, 1976.]
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 366 A.2d 369 (Shell Oil Co. v. Supervisor of Assessments) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Shell Oil Co. v. Supervisor of Assessments, 366 A.2d 369, 278 Md. 659, 1976 Md. LEXIS 663 (Md. 1976).

Opinion

Smith, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

We shall here reject a contention that tax assessors in assessing business property deliberately rejected its potential for service station use, thus discriminating against service station land assessed at a higher value.

This appeal was before us previously in Shell Oil Co. v. Supervisor, 276 Md. 36, 343 A. 2d 521 (1975). We declined to consider the merits of the appeal at that time, holding that “[sjince the Maryland Tax Court does not exercise a judicial function, review of a Tax Court decision is an exercise of original and not appellate judicial jurisdiction. Consequently, Ch. 385 of the Acts of 1971, and Ch. 448 of the *661 Acts of 1975, insofar as they provide for appeals to this Court and to the Court of Special Appeals from Tax Court decisions, are unconstitutional.” We directed that the case be transferred “to the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County for expeditious judicial review by that court of the Tax Court’s decision.” Appellant, Shell Oil Company (Shell), was dissatisfied with the circuit court’s decision and appealed to the Court of Special Appeals. We granted the writ of certiorari prior to consideration of the case by that court.

At issue here is the propriety of the assessment for the year 1970-71 of land owned by Shell at 2210 University Boulevard, Hyattsville, Prince George’s County. It is occupied by a gasoline service station. No challenge is made to the assessment of the building there erected. The land is located in the middle of the block on the north side of University Boulevard, a divided highway, some 1400 feet east of its intersection with Riggs Road, described by Shell as a “major intersection.” The assessment for the land for the year in question was at $3.00 per square foot. Shell points to certain other commercial properties in the immediate vicinity which its experts regarded as equally adaptable for service station use and which were assessed at $1.80 per square foot. It is on the basis of this difference that the challenge here is made. For ease of understanding the location of the various sites to which reference has been made, we append a copy of the plat used by Shell which the reporter is directed to reproduce.

Shell does not contend that its property is assessed at more than its full cash value. The requirement of Maryland Code (1957, 1969 Repl. Vol.) Art. 81, § 14 (b) (1) is that real property “shall be assessed at the full cash value thereof on the date of finality,” a term defined as meaning “current value less an allowance for inflation, if in fact inflation exists.” At the time in question the allowance for inflation was 40%, meaning that real property should be assessed at 60% of its fair market value. Shell refers to Code (1957,1969 Repl. Vol.) Art. 81, § 229 (1) providing that on appeal from the tax court a reviewing court “shall determine the case upon the record of the Maryland Tax Court and may affirm, *662 reverse, remand or modify the order appealed from; provided, that, unless such order is erroneous as a matter of. law or unsupported by substantial evidence appearing in the record, it shall be affirmed,” a provision now found by virtue of Ch. 338 of the Acts of 1976 (in response to our earlier decision in Shell) in virtually the same language in Code (1957, 1975 Repl. Vol., 1976 Cum. Supp.) Art. 81, § 229 (o). It claims the order of the Tax Court was “erroneous as a matter of law” and “unsupported by substantial evidence appearing in the record.”

Shell argues:

“A fundamental principle of real property assessment and taxation in Maryland is that all property within the same classification or subclassification must be treated uniformly. This principle is clearly set forth in Article 15 of the Declaration of Rights and it requires the assessor to consider the same factors in assessing each piece of property within a given class or subclass. If a property has the potential to generate a certain amount of income because of its size or location, that potential must be incorporated into the assessment of that property, regardless of whether or not the owner of that property has taken full advantage of that potential. The corollary to this principle is that the assessor may not, in assessing one property, consider certain factors which give that property value and ignore those very same factors in assessing other properties. This was the clear holding of this Court in Weil v. Supervisor of Assessments of Washington County, 266 Md. 238 (1972).” (Emphasis by Shell.)

Maryland Declaration of Rights Art. 15 provides in pertinent part:

“[T]he General Assembly shall, by uniform rules, provide for the separate assessment, classification and sub-classification of land, improvements on land and personal property, as it may deem proper; *663 and all taxes thereafter provided to be levied by the State for the support of the general State Government, and by the Counties and by the City of Baltimore for their respective purposes, shall be uniform within each class or sub-class of land, improvements on land and personal property which the respective taxing powers may have directed to be subjected to the tax levy ....”

Shell cites Weil v. Supervisor of Assess., 266 Md. 238, 292 A. 2d 68 (1972). That, too, was a gasoline service station case. It was argued that an assessment schedule which imposed a higher valuation per square foot on prime land actually devoted to service station use than on commercial land not so devoted established an illegally disproportionate, non-uniform, discriminatory assessment and was an illegal administrative subclassification of land. It was there contended “that the assessment of all parcels of land located along a given highway and similarly available for highway commercial uses in the same immediate neighborhood must begin with the same method of valuation, which means the same unit values where the unit value method is applied.” It was argued that “if one piece of commercial land is to be assessed at $2.00 a square foot because it has something called a ‘full service’ service station on it, or at $1.50 if it has less than ‘full service’ service station on it, and another piece of commercial land in the same business area is to be assessed at $.60 a square foot because it is used as a new car sales outlet, then only the service station land is being assessed at its highest and best use and the car sales land is being assessed at its lower actual use.” (Emphasis in appellant’s brief in Weil.) We observed there:

“It is apparent that the appellants are under the impression that all land in a given area will carry the same assessment per square foot. We do not understand a subclassification as being created when the highest and best use of a property is taken into consideration in determining its present cash value. Physical characteristics of land will *664 vary from lot to lot. The very size of a lot might well militate against its being used for certain purposes and suggest its use for other purposes. Good economics and good planning would dictate that there be some variation of use from lot to lot in a given area.”

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
366 A.2d 369, 278 Md. 659, 1976 Md. LEXIS 663, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/shell-oil-co-v-supervisor-of-assessments-md-1976.