Near the bottom of your ballot for the Nov. 5 General Election, you will find three ballot questions. One asks if the current statewide tax court should be relocated from the state’s executive branch to the judicial branch. Why is that on the ballot and what does it do?
The question as it appears on the ballot is simple enough:
“Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to provide for the Georgia Tax Court to be vested with the judicial power of the state and to have venue, judges, and jurisdiction concurrent with superior courts?”
A ‘Yes’ vote supports creating a new tax court housed in the state’s judiciary system, and ‘No’ would leave the current system in place.
Right now, the Georgia Tax Tribunal, which handles individual and corporate taxpayers’ disputes with the Georgia Department of Revenue, is part of the state’s executive branch. As an administrative court, it is housed in the Office of State Administrative Hearings.
Here are the disputes that the Georgia Tax Tribunal has the power to resolve:
- Appeals of property value assessments.
- Challenges to state tax bills.
- Tax refund claim denials.
- Challenges to state tax liens.
- Challenges to Georgia Department of Revenue regulations.
The ballot question is asking voters if they want to relocate this court to the state’s judiciary branch. That would require a constitutional amendment, because the relocation would modify the state’s judicial powers.
Why does relocating the court matter? One argument is separation of powers, so that the state’s tax court is no longer part of the executive branch along with the Department of Revenue.
“The biggest benefit of this is having … a separate court that’s not attached to the executive branch that’s making decisions that you’re not satisfied with,” said one of the referendum’s co-sponsors, State Sen. Brian Strickland (R-McDonough). “And so you actually get an independent court, versus an executive-branch court.”
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Centralize appeals
Moving the tax court to the judicial branch would also streamline the appeals process. Currently, plaintiffs must go through Fulton County Superior Court to appeal Tax Tribunal decisions – no matter where they live in the state. That’s because the tribunal is located in Fulton County.
The new tax court would have what’s called concurrent jurisdiction with county superior courts, meaning it would be at the same level. That means appeals would go to the state Court of Appeals.
“You’ll have now an independent court under our judiciary branch instead of the executive branch that’ll hear these cases. If you’re not satisfied with that ruling, instead of having to go through Fulton County Superior Court, you then could appeal directly, like any other civil case, to the Georgia Court of Appeals and Georgia Supreme Court,” Strickland said.
This could be more fair for Georgians who don’t reside in Fulton County. With the change, all Georgians would submit cases to the state tax court judge and then submit any appeals to the Georgia Court of Appeals.
Right now, a single administrative law judge, Lawrence O’Neal, handles the state’s Tax Tribunal, according to Christopher Perkins, a law clerk for the tribunal. O’Neal has served in the position since 2015.
If voters approve moving the state’s tax court to the judiciary branch, the governor would likely appoint a judge to a four-year term to hear all of the cases, according to Strickland.
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No extra charge
The change in venue likely wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything. No fiscal note was attached to the legislation for the voter referendum and the cost was deemed negligible.
According to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, the Tax Tribunal’s budget was $572,000 for the 2024 fiscal year. It handled 488 cases in 2023 and 622 in 2022.
There is also the marginal benefit that Fulton County would no longer be burdened by having to be the appeals court for the Tax Tribunal. Statistics on the number of Tax Tribunal cases appealed to Fulton were not available.
In rare bipartisan agreement, the Georgia House of Representatives unanimously approved the tax court voter referendum (165-0), while there was only one no vote in the State Senate.
The lone dissenter
The one dissenting vote came from State Sen. Colton Moore (R-Trenton). In a text message to Atlanta Civic Circle, Moore said voters should oppose relocating the tax court, because, in his view, it would needlessly grow government and add to the cost of judicial salaries.
It “could provide a barrier to good representation” and “more potential for government overreach and malicious use of law,” Moore said via text. “Why should a citizen in Northwest Georgia want a Tax Court? We have went [sic] hundreds of years with a superior court,” he said.
Strickland, responding to Moore’s arguments, said: “Once again, Senator Moore is misguided. He doesn’t understand the process. That is an argument that is just not true. There’s nothing rooted in fact.”
State Sen. Colton Moore (R-Trenton), as the only member of the Georgia State Legislators who opposed the proposal to switch to a Tax Court System, displays a red flag against reliance on a crony State Legislature to make decisions. Fact is that both a Tax Tribunal, and a Tax Court are courts of mediation which when their decisions are disputed result in the cases being brought before the Superior Courts. It would be more efficient to expand the number of Superior Courts on an as needed basis, and,or transfer cases to a Superior Court with fewer cases.
Russell Stewart