The Minnesota Tax Court confirmed that COVID-19-related extensions for filing property tax petitions apply in the state's tax court as well as its district courts.
In a January 12 order in Azhakh v. County of Hennepin and Samrah v. County of Hennepin, Judge Jane N. Bowman denied the county’s motions to dismiss two taxpayers’ tax court petitions as untimely, instead finding that the state Legislature intended to apply its COVID-19 filing extensions to property tax petitions in either type of court.
“Petitions concerning property taxes payable in 2020 that invoke the jurisdiction of either the district court or the tax court are timely filed provided they were filed by April 15, 2021,” Bowman wrote.
On April 15, 2021, Ira Azhakh and Bassam K. Abu Samrah each filed property tax petitions with the tax court, challenging Hennepin County’s 2019 assessments for taxes payable in 2020 on their respective properties.
The county filed motions to dismiss the petitions as untimely, arguing that while the Legislature had extended the deadline for property tax petitions filed in the district court, it had not done so for property tax petitions filed in the tax court. The two petitions were consolidated only for purposes of the motion hearing.
Bowman noted that under Minnesota Statute section 278.01, subdivision 1(a), a taxpayer may challenge a property tax assessment in either a state district court or the tax court. Normally such a petition must be filed by April 30 in the year in which the tax becomes payable, regardless of the court chosen by the taxpayer.
“Only the legislature may alter or extend these deadlines,” Bowman added, noting that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legislature enacted a series of extensions, including Session Law 74, which suspended all deadlines for district and appellate court filings from March 13, 2020, until February 15, 2021, and Session Law 3, which further extended that suspension through April 15, 2021.
The county argued that Session Law 74 did not extend any deadlines for filings in the tax court, thereby rendering Session Law 3’s April 15, 2021, deadline inapplicable to the taxpayers’ petitions.
Bowman disagreed, finding that Session Law 74 provided an extension of all property tax petition deadlines in chapter 278, which in turn were extended by Session Law 3. She explained that Session Law 74 suspended the “running of deadlines imposed by statutes governing proceedings in the district and appellate courts,” such as chapter 278 (emphasis in original). Because the chapter “clearly governs proceedings in the district court” as well as in the tax court, Bowman continued, “the text of Session Law 74 plainly refers to deadlines imposed by chapter 278.”
Bowman added that in WMH Property Owner LLP v. County of Hennepin, the tax court established that “under the plain meaning of the statute, Session Law 74 extended the deadlines in all district court proceedings, including chapter 278 petitions filed in the district court.”
Noting that the WMH Property Owner LLP decision “did not address whether Session Law 74 also extended the filing deadlines for chapter 278 petitions filed in the tax court,” Bowman continued that the tax court “answered that question in a subsequent ruling,” in Timber New Ulm Properties LP v. Brown County.
Bowman explained that in Timber New Ulm, which was decided after the county briefed its response in the instant case, the tax court held that “the suspension of deadlines provided in Session Law 74 applies not only to chapter 278 petitions invoking the jurisdiction of the district court but to those invoking the jurisdiction of the tax court,” (quoting Timber New Ulm).
Bowman added that the Timber New Ulm court found “no plausible — or rational — reason why the legislature would create an implicitly bifurcated scheme in which a case involving the same claims and the same property would be subject to one deadline if filed in the district court, and an entirely different deadline if filed in the tax court,” and that this interpretation avoids “such an incongruous result,” (quoting Timber New Ulm).
“Because Session Law 74 suspended the deadlines for property tax petitions under chapter 278 invoking the jurisdiction of either the district court or the tax court, and because Session Law 3 further extended that deadline until April 15, 2021, the petitions in these matters were timely filed,” Bowman concluded.
In Azhakh v. County of Hennepin (File No. 27-CV-21-4531) and Samrah v. County of Hennepin (File No. 27-CV-21-4588), the taxpayers were represented by Jay Smigielski of Ferdinand F. Peters Law Firm.