Today, I have received this letter from San jose City to pay business tax on rental homes. Any one else paying or got this notice?
At the bottom of letter, they clearly listed my rental homes and addresses…
Welcome to the club… Oakland has been doing that to us investment home owners forever now.
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If you never got any notice for business tax and never paid, what’s going to happen?
I never received any notice from Oakland. Should I volunteer to inquire and pay them?
If you do not register as rental business, you can keep quiet, normally.
However, It is city government, they add penalty when they know…and force you to pay. I hope you can pay from then on. This is guess, but I do not know how they deal such case.
If they never find out and the landlord never knows about this, no tax will ever be paid. Business tax for rentals is an exotic idea and nobody knows where and how to pay unless a bill is sent
Oh, I hate to burst your bubble or ruin your New Year’s @BAGB but if it does really apply to you, you better go and take care of it. Why? It happened to me. I didn’t know since I was new to the game way back when and I thought I could keep quiet. Well, I guess they did an audit via comparing records or somehow and found out. I ended up paying the taxes in arrears and penalty. It wasn’t as bad as say federal IRS taxes and penalties but still. Sorry…
Tax a scarcity… how socially responsible… not!!!
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Why that sadness?
The tax reform will make you rich with those tax refunds, won’t it? 
There’s a saying somewhere, ignorance of the law…“sorry officer, I didn’t know…” 
The worse mistake I ever made was to call the IRS many years ago to ask them if I made a mistake not paying this and that. They kept themselves very quiet, until 3 years later they, you know, they just stumbled on my mistake, yeah right!
$500 became $3K. Sons of a b…
you certify your tax forms, probably, to the best of your knowledge. ignorance is bliss.
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Yeah, I know, this topic says it all. Right? 
You do realize that a given moment in time, the IRS is looking at returns a couple or few years back (backlog). In the past, I would ask my buddy what years is he auditing, just to kind of know that in the back of my head. If you think you made a mistake, you should have checked with someone impartial and probably refiled that return. Not that hard to do.
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That tax has been around for 3-4+ years in San Jose.
In some States if you own a boat they tax you, stocks they nick you, RV they go after ownership annual tax.
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Note that votes approved Measure G in Nov 2016 only
You as an American voter are in fault if during the campaign you don’t pay attention to the famous “initiative-proposition x or y”.
If you are a landlord, a contractor, but you are on top of the news about your enterprise, you will fail.
I voted for the first time last year and I made sure I voted for, or against any law that would not help my pocket or schools, etc.
Now, if you are not a citizen, then, it’s understandable. You are as a fool as I was when I wasn’t because I didn’t know what was going to hit me. Voting or getting interested on what was going around was not of my interest.
Anything is worth it for me when it comes to politics now. I got to pay attention.
I just a letter from San Jose on Business Tax. I assume they looked at my mailing address to determine if I was living there or possibly renting it out. The tax is $195 in 2018 for residential rentals. 
If you have more than two rentals in San Jose and the prop.tax communication address is different one, they send the notice. They do not send it if you have one san jose rental. If you hold more than one rental, it is mandatory to pay. Otherwise, san jose city keep applying penatly (you know how government works !)
How do they figure out “more than one rental”?
You have san jose property address (A) and san jose property address (B), but property tax communication is sent to (Z). A simple computer logic will fetch all such addresses.
They assume home owner (Z) has two rentals (A) and (B), then send notice.
That sounds easy to by-pass?
If you really have two or more rentals and you do not pay, San Jose City may automatically invoke penalty, keeps on adding such penalty every month.
What will you do?
This is almost like you do not file tax return, what IRS or Franchise tax will do? They keep on adding penalty. If you delay 10 years, they will accumulate taxes+penalty.
You can not challenge (unless city is wrong), except compliance to local tax authorities.
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