Georgia § 48-5-345 - Receipt for digest and order authorizing use; assessment if deviation from proper assessment ratio.

§ 48-5-345. Receipt for digest and order authorizing use; assessment if deviation from proper assessment ratio.

Upon the determination by the commissioner that a county tax digest is in proper form, that the property therein that is under appeal is within the limits of Code Section 48-5-304, and that the digest is accompanied by all documents, statistics, and certifications required by the commissioner, including the number, overall value and percentage of total real property parcels of appeals in each county to the boards of equalization, arbitration, hearing officer, and superior court, and the number of taxpayers' failure to appear at any hearing, for the prior tax year, the commissioner shall issue a receipt for the digest and enter an order authorizing the use of said digest for the collection of taxes. All statistics and certifications regarding real property appeals provided to the commissioner under this paragraph shall be made publicly available on the Department of Revenue website. Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prevent the superior court from allowing the new digest to be used as the basis for the temporary collection of taxes under Code Section 48-5-310. Each year the commissioner shall determine if the overall assessment ratio for each county, as computed by the state auditor under paragraph (8) of subsection (b) of Code Section 48-5-274, deviates substantially from the proper assessment ratio as provided in Code Section 48-5-7, and if such deviation exists, the commissioner shall assess against the county governing authority additional state tax in an amount equal to the difference between the amount the state's levy, as prescribed in Code Section 48-5-8, would have produced if the digest had been at the proper assessment ratio and the amount the digest that is actually used for collection purposes will produce. The commissioner shall notify the county governing authority annually of the amount so assessed and this amount shall be due and payable not later than five days after all appeals have been exhausted or the time for appeal has expired or the final date for payment of taxes in the county, whichever comes latest, and shall bear interest at the rate specified in Code Section 48-2-40 from the due date. Beginning with tax digests on or after January 1, 2016, no county shall be subject to the assessment authorized by subparagraph (b) of this Code section. (Code 1981, § 48-5-345 , enacted by Ga. L. 1988, p. 1763, § 1; Ga. L. 1991, p. 728, § 4; Ga. L. 1992, p. 2494, § 6; Ga. L. 2000, p. 1683, § 7; Ga. L. 2012, p. 694, § 2/HB 729; Ga. L. 2015, p. 1219, § 18/HB 202.) The 2015 amendment, effective January 1, 2016, substituted the present provisions of paragraph (a)(1) for the former provisions, which read: "Upon the determination by the commissioner that a county tax digest is in proper form, that the property therein that is under appeal is within the limits of Code Section 48-5-304, and that the digest is accompanied by all documents, statistics, and certifications required by the commissioner, the commissioner shall issue a receipt for the digest and enter an order authorizing the use of said digest for the collection of taxes."; and added subsection (c). Code Commission notes. - Pursuant to Code Section 28-9-5, in 2015, "January 1, 2016" was substituted for "the effective date of this subsection" in subsection (c). Editor's notes. - Ga. L. 1992, p. 2494, § 10, not codified by the General Assembly, provided, in part: "County tax digests that were conditionally approved or disapproved by the commissioner for tax year 1991 in accordance with Article 5A of Chapter 5 of Title 48 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated as it existed on January 1, 1992, shall be considered conditionally approved for each succeeding year beginning January 1, 1992, until such time as the first digest review year occurs for the county under the provisions of this Act." Ga. L. 2000, p. 1683, § 11(c), not codified by the General Assembly, provides that Sections 2 through 10 of the Act shall be applicable to the 2000 tax digests and any subsequent tax digests.