"Tax Valuation" Means Assessment Valuation, Not Appraised Valuation

Limtiaco v. Camacho

Guam’s governor issued $400m in bonds to meet its obligations, but the Attorney General declined to sign the contracts because he calculated that they would put Guam over 10% indebtedness of its “aggregate tax valuation,” in violation of another statute. This evaluation, turns on whether that calculation should be made based on “assessed evaluation” or “appraised evaluation” because Guam assesses property at 35% of its appraised evaluation price. While the case was pending in the Ninth Circuit, Congress removed language vesting jurisdiction over appeals from Guam with that court. When applying for certiorari to review the Appeals court’s decision that the divestment applied both prospectively and to pending cases, Guam’s Attorney General filed his appeal after the 90 day window.

A timely filing of a petition for rehearing or a lower court’s appropriate decision to rehear an appeal may suspend the finality of a judgment and thereby reset the 90 day period by raising the question whether a court will modify the judgment and alter the parties’ rights. While the jurisdiction stripping statute and the case deciding that it applied to pending cases signaled the outcome in this case, it did not render final judgment, preventing the 90 day period from running.

Appraised value is the market value of a property; an assessed value is the value at which that property is taxed. The term “tax valuation” naturally means the value at which something is taxed. The Guam Supreme Court improperly used the word “taxed” to modify the property to be included, rather than to modify the term “valuation.” The Guam legislature could not modify the definition because the statute at issue is a federal statute, and if Congress had intended to apply the appraised value it could simply have used the term. While Guam could set its assessment valuation at 100% of appraised value there is a strong political check against it doing so by the voters whose property is to be taxed. Because the statute protects Guamamians as well as the United States this is not a case where deference is due the Guam Supreme Court in its construction of its Organic Act.