What Is a Clerical Error

# (1)

(1) Clerical errors are those procedural or recording errors which do not require the use of judgment or subjective decision making for their correction. A clerical error is an arithmetic or copying error or an omission on the roll or misstatement of property value that is apparent from assessor office records without speculation or conjecture, assumption or presumption, and that is correctable without the use of appraisal judgment or the necessity to view the property.

# (2)

(2) Clerical errors are those which, had they been discovered by the assessor prior to the certification of the assessment and tax roll of the year of assessment, would have been corrected as a matter of course.

# (3)

(3) An error is a clerical error or omission on the roll if all the facts necessary to correct the error or omission on the roll are contained in the records and could be readily determined by an impartial person examining these records.

(a) Records include, but are not limited to, field notes, the assessment roll, tax cards, deeds, vouchers and appraisal cards and jackets, which are regularly maintained by the assessor's office and used to determine value.

Example 1: "A" owns a parcel of land with a house on it. "A" divides the land and sells part to "B," but retains that part of the land with the house. The assessor places the value of the house on "B's" land. The value of the house was placed upon the wrong tax lot. It was not, in the words of 311.207 "from any cause been omitted, in whole or in part, from assessment and taxation on the current assessment and tax rolls …" It's on the roll but on the wrong account. Thus, the property was never actually omitted from the roll but clerically placed on the wrong parcel of land.

This comes within the definition of clerical error because it can be corrected solely from the records of the assessor as these records reflect the correct situation which, if discovered by the assessor before certification of the assessment and tax roll, would have been corrected as a matter or course and is correctable without the use of appraisal judgment or the necessity to view the property.

Example 2: A tract of land was zoned agricultural prior to April. Late in April of the same year, this property was rezoned to residential, appraised, and billed accordingly. In July of the same year, the Planning Commission again caused the property to be rezoned to agricultural. When it was reappraised in a later year, the appraiser overlooked the rezoning and appraised the tract on the basis of a residential zone, thus giving it a higher valuation.

Evidence shows that at the last appraisal the appraisal jacket of the taxpayer's property had the residential zone still on the outside but that there was a note inside of the appraisal jacket indicating the agricultural zoning. Had the appraiser looked inside of the jacket, the appraiser would have seen the latest rezoning note and would not have relied on the residential zone on the outside of the jacket.

This comes within the definition of clerical error because it can be corrected solely from the records of the assessor as these records reflect the correct situation which, if discovered before certification of the assessment and tax roll, would have been corrected as a matter of course. The correction can be made without the use of appraisal judgment or the necessity to view the property because the correct value (i.e., value based on an agricultural zone) appears in the records of the assessor.