State Board of Equalization: sales and use taxes: administration: interest.

The Sales and Use Tax Law requires the payment of interest at a specified rate on a failure to timely pay taxes, specified prepayments, and amounts collected as tax under that law, from the date on which those amounts became due and payable to the state until the date of payment. That law authorizes the State Board of Equalization, in its discretion, to relieve all or any part of interest imposed under specified circumstances. This bill would allow the members of the board, meeting as a public body, to relieve all or any part of the interest imposed, not to exceed a specified amount in a 12-month period, if the board finds, in its discretion, that a person's failure to make a timely payment was due to extraordinary circumstances, as defined, and that it is inequitable to compute interest in accordance with existing law, and if the person, among other things, pays the amount due on which the interest is imposed and files with the board a declaration setting forth specified information. This bill would impose a civil penalty upon a person who knowingly provides false information in that declaration.