AI-assisted research summary: Tax assessors must investigate and list property with unknown or absent owners, and tax officials must notify the real owner and make corrections if the true owner is later found.
§1964. Listing and assessing of property of unknown owners A. Each tax assessor, on and after the first day of January of each year, shall examine the records in the office of the recorder of mortgages and shall otherwise make faithful inquiry and investigation to ascertain what taxable property in his district or parish belongs to residents, to absent owners, and to unknown owners. The assessor shall make a separate list describing each tract of land and other items of taxable property belonging to any owner whose name is unknown and shall affix the valuation thereof in person or by sworn deputy, unless the owner, or his agent or attorney, shall have delivered to him a correct and complete tax list containing the name and post office address of the absent owner and of his agent or attorney, on or before the first day of June. The assessor shall fill out a separate assessment form describing each tract of land and other property belonging to each unknown owner and shall affix a separate valuation to each separate tract. B. Whenever property has been listed and assessed in the name of unknown owners, or of persons other than the real owners, and the tax collector subsequently discovers the real owner thereof, he shall at once notify the real owner that certain described property belonging to him has been assessed to unknown owners, or to any other person, and call upon him to come forward within ten days from the service of such notice and show cause why the listing and valuation of the property should not stand as final. The tax collector shall also at once notify the assessor of the fact that certain described property or properties, assessed to unknown owners, or to persons other than the real owners, has been discovered to be the property of a certain named person, and the assessor shall, after ten days' notice to the owner, make the necessary correction upon his rolls and the rolls in the office of the recorder of mortgages and auditor. Acts 2006, No. 622, §8, eff. Dec. 11, 2006.