Property Tax on gliders in California?

if the tax law says ... personal property.. it's taxable
if it specifies.. "aircraft".. it's taxable..

In this era of tight budgets, many state and county/local governments are
realizing that there are taxes out there they have not collected that they
legally could. Our local county assessor did a search on all aircraft in the
FAA data base based on zip code registrations and then mailed out "tax
forms" to the registered owner.

Our club even received forms on aircraft that had long since been destroyed
and the owner did not "un register" it. They were kind enough to ask when it
entered the county and value at that time, then they "depreciated" the value
to current year and sent a tax bill.

Many "gliders" don't get "caught" because they are always in the trailer and
not kept at the airport so the local airport watch dogs don't see the
N-number to "run it". But then the assessor's office gets smart that they
can do a FAA data base search based on locality of registration, and they
"gotcha".

A $100K value aircraft pays the same tax rate as a $100K house, in this
state/county anyway. But the aircraft "depreciates" on the tax rolls, and
the house "appreciates".

BT

"Mark Navarre" wrote in message
...
Have received a letter from the tax assessor requesting location and value
info
on my glider for the purpose of property tax assessment. I am curious,
why
now? Since I have owned the glider almost 5 years already, I wonder if it
took
that long for the County/State to catch up on the paperwork.
The letter refers to California revenue and tax code section 5362, and I
have
reviewed the entire section 53xx and found no specific inclusion or
exclusion
of gliders or sailplanes. I will of course be bringing this up with my
tax
accountant, but wondered if any other glider owners have experienced a
similar
situation?
-
Mark Navarre
2/5 black ace
LoCal, USA
-