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Commissioners deny long-running tax-abatement request after dispute with Department of Revenue
Summary
Gerald and Roy Schwagel sought refund of roughly $7,000 in mobile-home taxes they say arose after a unit was removed in 2007; commissioners denied the abatement request after agency records showed the Department of Revenue received an affidavit in 2024, not 2007.
Flathead County commissioners on May 13 voted to deny a tax-refund abatement request from Gerald and Roy Schwagel, who said they stopped paying taxes on a mobile home removed from their property in February 2007 and later learned their mortgage company had been paying the tax bills from escrow.
The Schwagels told the board they filed a notarized affidavit in 2007 showing the mobile home was removed. County officials and a Department of Revenue representative disputed that the agency had any record of receiving the document until Sept. 30, 2024, when the Schwagels filed an AB 26 informal review request and a mobile-home destroyed affidavit.
County Treasurer Adele Krantz confirmed the county issues tax bills using Department of Revenue assessment data, and those bills are used to calculate distributions to schools, cities and other taxing entities. Andy Pritchard of the Department of Revenue said the agency found no evidence in its files of prior submissions and processed the documents filed Sept. 30, 2024, for the 2025 tax year.
The Schwagels asked for about $7,000 in refund. Commissioners discussed the administrative difficulty of recovering funds previously distributed to other taxing entities and whether the county should cap any refund look-back period; one commissioner noted statutes and longstanding practice generally limit how far back abatements are handled and that pursuing full repayment would be time-consuming.
A motion to grant the abatement lacked a second and died. A subsequent motion to deny the abatement carried by voice vote. The board instructed no immediate refund; staff said the mobile-home assessment will be corrected for 2025 so no future bill will be issued for the unit.
Key points: The Department of Revenue told commissioners it had no record of receipt of prior affidavits. The county treasurer said county tax bills are produced from DOR data and distributed monthly to taxing jurisdictions, which complicates any retroactive refund. The board did not authorize a refund at the meeting.
