Well, you can’t get it in Berkeley, yet. The County insists they check tax assessments for accuracy, see: SpecialAssessmentsPortal.pdf (acgov.org). The City insists they only tax “basements” and not “crawlspaces”. But, a search of the City’s second set of books tells a different story. This database derived from drawings on 1950s 4×6 cards, is a story of arbitrariness and haphazard taxation. Many don’t pay square footage taxes on their basements. The space is simply crossed off (or erased from) the fancy little building cards. See for yourself!

Here are examples of folks who have been treated fairly when we are not:

Bonita Example: Basement is shown on card as 1248 ft2, and total of 7797 ft2, which total is not charged this taxpayer.  Finance does not charge the landlord for the basement. Actual charges for this Bonita property are 6919 ft2 as seen in the attached database

This image also shows that the building department/County Assessor has a mismatched square footage, even when excluding the basement.  This building was rebuilt in Jan. 1962. 

Channing Example: Basement was removed from the square footage tally because it was “dirt floored and used for storage”

This photo of the Channing Example was taken just before the owner obtained a permit to do a house lift.

Deakin Example: The 720 ft2 basement, described as a “full basement” is not included. No explanation given.

This is how the basement looked when the property sold earlier this year:

Grant Example: Exempted area under the house labeled as 528 ft “excess wall”.  This is how the owner describes that area when they were selling this year: “There is an additional workshop space/storage with its own separate entrance”

Jefferson Example: Basement square footage of 840 ft2 crossed completely off.  The owner described that space as 6’ headroom unusable space.  See permit also attached.

This is how the homeowner described their basement as unusable to avoid taxation.  It worked!

McGee Example: Finished basement distinguished from unfinished and only finished charged.

Otis Example:  Finished basement square footage of 564 ft2 is not included in the total

Spruce Example: Finished basement is in parenthesis and is not included.  1992 addition is also not included.  2344 ft2 house is only charged 1357 ft2 as seen in the attached database, because the 1991 addition and the basement are not charged city taxes.

Here is the City’s inaccurate taxable square footage value for the Spruce example:

Vincente Example: Unfinished basement square footage of 352 ft2 is in parenthesis and not included in total

As these examples and numerous others show, the City’s square footage database is inaccurate.  It is time to correct ALL of the 11 Harmed Homeowners, and the few others who have asked for corrections/refunds in the name of uniformity of taxation.

We are willing to share the actual addresses with anyone who asks.  They are just redacted here to protect the identity of the homeowners who, more than likely, have played no part in the inconsistencies, and should not be blamed by the public.

ALL taxpayers are entitled to fair and equitable treatment.

History of Square Footage Taxation in Berkeley

by Leland Traiman  November 2020

Prior to the passage of Proposition 13 in June 1978 cities, counties, school districts and other special districts could increase property taxes to pay for service by a simple majority of a city council or district’s board.  These property taxes were all ad valorem taxes, which means taxes based on the value of the property.  Proposition 13 took away the ability of elected boards of counties, cities, and districts to raise taxes and instead required a two-thirds vote of the local electorate.  Additionally, Proposition 13 said that ad valorem property taxes could not exceed 1% of the assessed value.  This was a devastating blow to the budgets of all of California’s local entities.

Initially, most thought that only parcel taxes, where each parcel paid the exact same amount, could be passed with a two-thirds vote of the electorate.  Of course, this was inequitable as a large and a small parcels would each pay an identical amount.  A small one story one-bedroom home would pay exactly the same amount as a ten-story office building.

To cope with their budgetary shortfall the Berkeley City Council created the Citizens’ Budget Review Committee, and I was appointed to the committee by Councilwoman Florence McDonald.  Gus Newport was mayor at that time.  While the rest of the committee busied themselves with how to equitably distribute the City of Berkeley’s greatly reduced revenue, I decided to find a way to equitably raise revenue.  I came up with idea of taxing inside useable (defined as appropriate for business or residential use) square footage of buildings, referred to in legal language as “improvements.”  I found a positive correlation between value and square footage in Berkeley.  Therefore, a tax based on inside useable square footage would mimic ad valorem taxation.  This was essential because I knew Berkeley’s voters would demand equity.  Berkeley City Attorney, Michael Lawson, made the final draft of the measure for the ballot and the ordinance thereafter.  This idea eventually became the Library Relief Act of 1980 (LRA).

LRA totally funded the Berkeley Public Library with a significantly expanded budget.  LRA also took the library out of the City of Berkeley’s general fund freeing up money which could then be used for other city services. 

At some point, a commercial property questioned the legality of taxing garages under the LRA.  I had intended for garages to be taxed, but the wording of the ordinance was unclear thanks to Attorney Lawson’s sloppy wording. Therefore, it was determined that garages should not be taxed.  Hence, almost all property tax bills had to be adjusted and public garages were exempted from the tax.  The LRA had a 10 year expiration date in June 1990.  However, in 1988, an amendment was passed making the tax permanent, increasing the tax rate, codifying the garage exclusion and imposing penalties for failure to perform obligations under the act.

Spit Roll Taxation

Prior to Proposition 13, ad valorem taxes could have a split roll, with higher rates for business property than for residential property.  Therefore, I decided that the LRA would have a split roll.  We (a dedicated group of librarians and myself) calculated that a residential property tax of 2.3 cents per square foot and business property tax of 3.5 cents would provide the Library with an appropriate budget.  Unfortunately, we were about $100,000 short due to Lawson’s garage mistake.

There was also an inflation factor built into the LRA.  This gave the Berkeley City Council power to raise the tax annually up to the specified inflation factor for the previous year.

The Berkeley finance director showed me that the square footage of all of Berkeley’s 29,000 buildings were recorded on four by six cards in the city finance office with a card for each floor of each building.  Each card had a small floorplan of each floor and the square footage of that floor.  Therefore, it was just a question of adding up all the business square footage and all the residential square footage.  This was a laborious task, but we knew it could be done.  The small group of librarians and I (all volunteers) processed the thousands of building cards available so that the City could impose tax on homes and businesses. 

No site visits were done.  We just relied on the building cards to do the arithmetic.  We also combed through building permit records from the intervening years, up to 1980, to account for construction additions that were not on the cards.  These were added to the tally.  It was an enormous project, and it took much persistence to complete.  Hopefully, all such information is now on computers for much quicker calculations.

Originally, when I first proposed the idea, the Berkeley finance director told me, “Square footage taxation is a crazy idea, it can never work and, as the voters will definitely reject it, the entire thing would be moot.”  Berkeley passed LRA by 69% of the vote.  In 1988 Berkeley voters amended the LRA with more than the required 2/3 vote which doubled the tax rate.

After the successful passage and implementation of LRA the idea was adopted by other California cities, counties, school districts and special districts. 

The mandate for uniform taxation

Eventually, statewide legislation was passed prohibiting split roll taxation.  All taxes passed now must have the same rate for all taxpayers, both business and residential, within the district being taxed.  (see Borikas vs. Alameda Schools, 2013, S209992)

The Berkeley Citizen’s Inequity Story

We have identified 700 properties escaping assessments at a cost of over $4 Million to the City and schools, sacrifices that residents of this City should not have to make.

Notice a new addition identified on Haste. It is a 24 unit building with almost $20,000 square feet and is being charged assessments for only 2700 square feet of dwelling area. This is less than many single family dwellings and much less than the widow on Stuart Street who erroneously supports the City services at the 4200 square foot level! (Her home is only 1699 ft2)

Please write to us if you don’t agree with this injustice and you would like to support her to get a correction. You can also get behind the idea that the City should also correct the 24 unit building at the same time…why is that landlord being favored. Is it an incompetency error or intentional? You can decide which would be worse.

The city has lost over $2.8 Million in city tax revenues over the past decade. The county has lost almost a million in revenue for the state in the past decade.

The equity in taxation desired by voters with the original square footage taxes has been sabotaged by lax internal controls in the city’s non-public set of books.

Many of these properties are rentals, so landlords benefit.

Many of these homes have been added onto and remodeled, so the wealthy benefit.

The average homeowner suffers economically when all available taxes are not collected from these 500, because when the City asks voters to approve new taxes, the average homeowner pays a greater tax burden than the 500 undercharged.

The house numbers have been redacted to give the homeowners anonymity, but BATE is willing to disclose the exact addresses when the City agrees to reform.

The List of 500 is only a portion of the undercharges in the City. BATE volunteers have not collected and quantified the data for whole city’s undercharges yet. It is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process that by ordinance, the City Manager should direct City staff to do themselves.

DEMAND HONEST TAXATION for DISADVANTAGED COMMUNITY MEMBERS!

Black, brown and socioeconomically disadvantaged families are deceived by their local government. Many black, brown and elderly community members are taxed for non-dwelling space in their homes even though the tax code specifically imposes tax for dwelling space!  The result of this scheme?  Black, brown and elderly families are thousands of dollars poorer today.

Meanwhile, many privileged community members including some Councilmembers and other elected, are not paying for all of their dwelling space.  Beautifully remodeled homes, with City permits, are paying for only half of their dwelling space, like this beautiful home on Piedmont Ave, saving the wealthy thousands $$$ each year.

The Taxing Authorities need to restore equity to harmed community members!  Stand in support of socioeconomically disadvantaged in the City of Berkeley.  Ask black, brown and elderly community members you know if they have checked their property tax bills to see if they are a victim of this taking from their local governments. 

It is a criminal infraction to deviate from appropriate taxation. The City and County have been unwilling to conform and it benefits the wealthy. The cumulative results tallied by our organization so far are $947,000 in lost revenues to the City and School Programs over the last decade, and $570,000 of lost county revenues. 

When the working class backbone of the Berkeley’s community subsidize the wealthy, socioeconomic disparity increases!

What are you willing to give up so a disparately impacted community member can receive equitable treatment?  PLEASE CALL YOUR COUNCILMEMBER and County Tax Collector NOW in protest.

At the May 11, 2020 Budget and Finance committee Zoom meeting, we requested that the City exhaust all available revenue sources before accessing the City Reserve Funds as per requirements outlined in the 2018 City Resolution 68332. 

We feel it is the City’s duty to correct the multitude of underassessed tax records before resorting to use of Emergency Funds. We presented the two following examples, which are homes for sale, and are in need of correction since building expansions through the years have not been taxed as required by law. (BMC 7.56.030, 7.81.100 and others). A sample little Berkeley home is charged for non-conforming space, so pays more assessments that the first two much larger, remodeled homes!!  The two City ordinances above require tax to be levied on the dwelling unit, not the dwelling and non-conforming spaces. To confound sensibility even further, a house across the street from the little sample home has a cavernous non-conforming space that is not charged!

2319 California

2931 Piedmont

Sample uncharged non-conforming space….why is this non-conforming space untaxed, while the sample little house – not shown to protect family privacy, is charged for non-conforming space?

The City auditor presented the following goal to the committee, “ensure social equity by evaluating the need to support Berkeley residents comprehensively rather than on a one at a time basis…” Addressing the anticipated exigent needs of the City’s finances requires a well-managed and comprehensive overhaul of the tax assessment system, not a hasty one time dip into the City’s reserves. This will accomplish two goals:

Ensure social equity as the will of the voters will be restored

Obviate or lessen the need to dip into the City’s Reserves.

The City has added a portal to their web site which makes their taxable building square footage database available to those who can navigate it to find their own parcel data. We congratulate the City in taking this step in the right direction. If you would like to take a look, it can be found at: https://data.cityofberkeley.info/City-Government/Taxable-Square-Footage/9a47-nj4i.

If that spreadsheet is too difficult to navigate, you still have the option of reverse calculating the value from your 2019-20 tax bill (SCHL ED PROGS/BSEP divided by .398) If you find a discrepancy between that TBSFT value and what you think the correct building area of your dwelling or business is, the City is inviting you to notify them, with various documentation requirements, for the potential of a correction.

Additionally, curious taxpayers will want to see the initiating document after which the Finance Department’s response memo was written. Here is the BNC letter requesting a Special Hearing on the matters of 1. Miscalculations finding their way to incorrect entries in the City’s database. 2. Request for justification to it’s taxpayers why their City and School Taxes include charges on non-conforming spaces when the voters specifically voted to tax dwelling space.

Many dirt non-conforming spaces are not taxed. So, this point is especially irksome to those who are taxed for their dirt areas.

Just for fun, take a look at the house for sale at 913 Allston the next time they have an open house. The listing and the county say the house is 998 ft2. The realtor and owner say there is no basement or crawlspace. It is clear to the eye, it is a tiny house very close to the ground. Yet, the City has been charging that property owner taxes on 2068 ft2 for years, about $1000/year extra.

Unfortunately, we have found that the City has removed the County Building Area Field from their City of Berkeley Parcel Viewer page. This will make it a little more difficult for taxpayers who are just now starting to investigate their overcharged property tax assessments, but certainly not impossible! The Tableau on our site has the 2019 county building area values and can be used in most cases to reliably compare your parcel’s City square footage to the County’s. If in doubt, you can also call the County Assessor to get your building area of public record (510-272-3787). Ask for a copy of your property characteristics.

Please reach out to us with questions or if you need help with calculations or guidance through the process of challenging your overcharges and asking for a refund. Some overcharges are easier to get refunded than others, each case is unique! You can email us at equity@berkeleytaxes.info.