ONLINE ACCESS TO REVENUE & TAXATION CODES & PROPERTY TAX LAW GUIDES Barbara Godwin County of San Luis Obispo Presented October 3, 2016 at the Property Tax Manager’s Meeting in Sacramento, CA

You can look up needed code sections on the State of California Legislative Counsel website at www.leginfo.ca.gov Go to a code book or request a specific code section.

Using the “Text Search” tab you can search for code sections by subject in one or more code books at a time if you do not know the specific code section that you want. (However, this site only provides the code verbiage itself with no history or background info.)

You can also look up Assembly and Senate Bills and You can also look up Assembly and Senate Bills and subscribe to these bills to receive emails when updates or status changes occur on the bills.

Property Tax Law Guides (PTLG) The PTLGs were the predominant code reference for years and included all the background and historical information on each legislative code section and updates were provided annually. Due to budget constraints at the California State Board of Equalization (BOE), the complimentary hard copies for the three volumes of the Property Tax Law Guides was discontinued after December 2010. You may continue to receive hard copies for Volumes I & II through the BOE’s subscription service (price list on next slide).

Price List for PTLG This Guide is for sale to local governments and is the same law guide used by BOE staff. The law guides are available in the following formats: The hard copy law guides consist of 3-ring binders (6” x 9”) with loose-leaf pages. The purchase price covers the cost of binders, tabbed dividers, the basebook, and the first year’s subscription to the updating service. There may be multiple updates each year. 2. The DVD consists of both the Property Taxes and the Business Taxes Law Guides on one disc. They are in HTML format. The HTML version allows you to search, copy, paste, and print. The DVD will include all current hard copy updates at the time of its production.

Property Tax Law Guides Where to get them with legislative history, references, etc. FOR FREE! Copies of the actual pages out of the PTLG, including the background references on the code sections, are available on the BOE website. The BOE took over the control of publishing the Law Guides on their website in 2011. It is their intent to have urgency statutes updated prior to their effective date and usually about 30 days after enrollment.

Property Tax Law Guides on the BOE Website (Continued) The BOE has established an EPublishing Unit whose function is to promote all tax related law guides online (sales tax, use tax, property tax, etc.) The BOE has no control over the timing of any updates so the information may not be as current as the LegInfo website. They have added an Archives tab that has links to all the revisions and previous Law Guides by year, which becomes an ongoing, historic reference.

Property Tax Law Guides on the BOE Website (Continued) You can subscribe to automatically receive an email notification each time updates are made to the Property Tax Statutes on the BOE website

HOW TO ACCESS THE PTLGs Go to Board of Equalization Website: www. boe HOW TO ACCESS THE PTLGs Go to Board of Equalization Website: www.boe.ca.gov From the Home Page select the Taxes & Fees Tab

On the Taxes & Fees page, select the Property Tax “Link”

On the Property Tax page, select the Property Taxes Law Guides “link” (which is in the resources column) Enlarged View

The previous link takes you to the Table of Contents for the PTLG

All entries in the Table of Contents have direct links to their corresponding information. For example, by selecting “Property Taxation”, you will be redirected to the page showing the contents of that category (as shown on the next slide).

Contents of the Property Taxation, Division 1 You can scan down the page to locate and subsequently link to the desired Part or Section.

The PTLG includes much more than just the Property Tax Revenue & Taxation Code

By selecting the “Archives” tab you can get to the listing of all the BTLG & PTLG revisions by year.

If you click on a year, the revisions are listed under the associated volume of the book that has been changed.

There is also easy access to a wealth of information on a variety of subjects.

QUESTIONS? http://www.boe.ca.gov http://www.leginfo.legislature.ca.gov