There is no Such Thing as a Tax Assessors – Notes from the Office of Jeffrey Prang
Editor’s Note: Annual Secured Property Tax Bills are prepared and mailed by the Treasurer and Tax Collector in October of each year. The first installment of that tax bill is due on November 1 and becomes delinquent by the close of business on December 10. In light of the deadline, Assessor Prang wanted to expose the term “tax Assessor” as a non-entity and when used, can become problematic.
Whenever I have the opportunity to speak to members of the community, I always begin, importantly, by telling the audience what I do not do. I do this because the one thing I don’t do as Assessor is the one thing almost everybody thinks I do – I do not collect taxes! The person responsible for collecting taxes has a very intuitive title, she is called the Tax Collector!
Candidly, the property tax administrative system is very confusing. There are multiple departments that each have a different piece of the system. The Assessor is the only one of those departments headed by an elected official, which may be why people gravitate toward my office with questions that actually belong to another department.
One reason for the confusion is the inexplicable yet universal use of the term “Tax Assessor.” I have been the Assessor for 10 years, and to the best of my knowledge, the office of “tax assessor” does not, and has never really existed in the United States, except in a few very limited jurisdictions far from California. I find it fascinating that the term is so commonly used even though there is no history in this country of such a position.
Here’s where the misuse of the term tax assessor becomes problematic. The term tax assessor is actually a conflation of two separate offices, that of the Assessor and that of the Treasurer and Tax Collector (TTC). In the Assessor’s office, more than 50% of all calls we receive from the public are actually regarding Tax Collector issues. This can be very frustrating to a member the public who calls with an issue and then feels that they are getting the runaround as they are routed to a different department.
In my experience, property owners who call for the “tax assessor” are almost always routed to my office. However, nine out of 10 of those calls are actually for the Tax Collector. This means that when we receive those calls we regrettably have to inform the property owner that they reached the wrong department. If the questions are regarding basic information that we have knowledge of, we do try to answer them ourselves. We also can provide tax bills to those who request them as a way of supporting our colleagues at the TTC. But often time, taxpayers end up getting transferred to the TTC.
While this missive may not solve the confusion over offices responsibilities, you now know that there is no “tax assessor,” but rather, there is an Assessor and a Treasurer and Tax Collector and which one does what.
Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang leads the largest local public property assessment agency in the nation. His office of about 1,400 appraisers and support staff are dedicated to creating an accurate and timely property Assessment Roll. This year, the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office conducted more than 2.5 million real estate and business assessments valued at just over $2 trillion.
