How to Fill Out and File California Form 571-L: Deadlines and Penalties

California Form 571-L, the Business Property Statement, is the annual filing that reports the original cost of your business’s taxable equipment, fixtures, and supplies to your county assessor. You must file it if your business owns taxable personal property with an aggregate cost of $100,000 or more, or if the assessor sends you a written request to file. The statement is due by April 1, and a 10 percent penalty applies to any statement not received by May 7.

Who Has to File

California Revenue and Taxation Code Section 441 requires every person or business owning taxable personal property with an aggregate cost of $100,000 or more to file a signed property statement with the county assessor each year.¹ “Aggregate cost” means the combined original acquisition cost of all your business personal property, not its current market value. The threshold applies whether you operate as a sole proprietor, partnership, LLC, or corporation.

Businesses below the $100,000 threshold still have to file if the assessor sends a written request. Ignoring that request is a separate violation of state law, and the assessor will estimate your property’s value from whatever information is available.² Repeated refusal to provide information can be charged as a misdemeanor, though that is rare in practice.

Everything you report is measured as of the January 1 lien date. Whatever your business owns at 12:01 a.m. on January 1 is what belongs on that year’s statement, even if you sell or scrap it the following day.

What You Report and What’s Exempt

Form 571-L covers business personal property — everything your business owns that is not land or a permanent building. The usual items are machinery, office furniture, computers, tools, and trade fixtures. You also report supplies on hand as of January 1: stationery, cleaning materials, fuel, and repair parts that your business uses rather than sells.³

Business inventory held for sale or lease in the ordinary course of business is fully exempt and does not go on the form. That includes finished goods, raw materials that become part of a product you sell, and used equipment consigned to a dealer for resale.⁴ The line between supplies (taxable) and inventory (exempt) trips people up. Bolts welded into a product you sell are inventory. The same bolts used to fix your own equipment are supplies.

Computer software gets special treatment. Application software you buy to run your business, like accounting or design programs, is exempt. Basic operational programs fundamental to making a computer function are taxable, but only at the value of the storage media, not the software itself.⁴

Filling Out the Form

The form has three main parts followed by two cost-detail schedules. Before starting, pull together your fixed asset register, purchase invoices, and lease agreements. You need original acquisition costs, purchase dates, and details on any property at your location that someone else owns.

Part I: General Information

Enter your business’s legal name, mailing address, and the physical location of the property. If those addresses differ, complete both, since the assessor uses the physical address to assign the correct tax rate area. Indicate whether you own the land, and if so, confirm that the recorded name on your deed matches what the assessor has on file.⁵

Part I also asks where your general ledger and accounting records are kept and available for audit. If they live at a corporate office or your accountant’s office, list that address. The assessor may request to examine those records, and pointing them to the wrong place creates avoidable friction.

If there has been a change in ownership — someone acquired more than 50 percent of your corporation’s voting stock or a majority ownership interest in another entity type — report that in the property transfer section of Part I.

Part II: Property Belonging to You

Part II captures the broad categories of property your business owns. Each line item asks for the full cost at 100 percent of actual cost, including sales and use tax, freight, and installation charges.³

Line 1, Supplies: report supplies on hand at January 1 at their current replacement cost, not what you originally paid.
Line 2, Equipment: this is the total carried over from Schedule A.
Line 3, Equipment out on lease or rent to others: report the cost of equipment you own and lease out, with an attached schedule listing each item, the lessee, and the annual rent.
Line 5, Construction in progress: unallocated costs for improvements or equipment not yet placed in service.

Part III: Property Belonging to Others

If equipment on your premises belongs to someone else — leased copiers, rented forklifts, vendor-owned vending machines — you report it in Part III so the assessor can tax the actual owner. Do not double-count these items on Schedule A or B.³

For each leased item, list the year of acquisition, year of manufacture, description, lease contract number, the total installed cost to purchase (including sales tax), and the annual rent. Read the lease and indicate whether the lessor or lessee is contractually responsible for property taxes. The assessor considers that designation but is not bound by it. Lease-purchase option equipment and capitalized leases with a final payment remaining get the same detail. Report government-owned property separately.

Schedule A: Equipment Cost Detail

Schedule A is the core of the filing. List the original cost of all equipment, broken into columns by type — typically machinery and trade equipment in one column and office furniture and equipment in another. Group costs by the year each asset was acquired or placed in service.⁶

Include fully depreciated items and expensed equipment. Writing something off on your income tax return does not make it exempt from property tax. Each year’s total should reflect the full original cost, including sales or use tax, freight, and installation. If you disposed of equipment during the year, subtract its cost from the appropriate acquisition-year row. Most Schedule A errors come from leaving out use tax on out-of-state purchases or omitting freight, and the assessor catches those during an audit.

Schedule B: Buildings, Improvements, and Land

Schedule B covers building improvements, leasehold improvements, and fixtures. Tenants who installed specialized wiring, plumbing, HVAC, or other items accessory to the building report them here as fixtures. Land improvements you own — paving, fencing, landscaping — also go on Schedule B.³ As with Schedule A, list costs by acquisition year and include all associated charges.

Whichever way you file, the statement must be signed under penalty of perjury.

How to Submit the Statement

There are three ways to get the completed form to your county assessor.

E-filing. Most county assessors offer a free online portal where you complete and submit the 571-L through a web browser. Nothing to download, and it is the fastest option for a single-location business.⁷
Paper filing. Download the form from your county assessor’s site or from the California State Board of Equalization, complete it, and mail it in. Use certified mail or a bona fide private courier so you have proof of the postmark date. The postmark controls whether the filing is timely.¹
Standard Data Record (SDR). Large businesses with multiple locations across several California counties can upload one XML data file to a statewide server instead of filing separately in each county. SDR uses a predefined field layout and requires pre-registration with each county to verify account numbers.⁷

Paper filings need a wet signature. E-filing portals handle the electronic declaration.

Deadline, Grace Period, and the Late Penalty

Form 571-L is due between the January 1 lien date and 5 p.m. on April 1. State law builds in a grace period: the 10 percent penalty under Revenue and Taxation Code Section 463 does not apply unless you miss May 7.¹ If May 7 falls on a weekend or legal holiday, a statement postmarked by the next business day counts as timely.

The penalty is 10 percent of the assessed value of the unreported taxable personal property added to the current tax roll.⁸ On a business with $500,000 in assessed personal property, that works out to $50,000.

If you never file, the assessor estimates your property value from whatever information is available, applies the 10 percent penalty, and can add interest on an escape assessment reaching back up to four years. Persistent refusal to provide records can be charged as a misdemeanor.

Getting the Penalty Waived

The penalty can be abated, but the standard is high. File a written application with the county board of equalization or assessment appeals board showing that the failure to file on time was due to reasonable cause and circumstances beyond your control, and that you exercised ordinary care without willful neglect.⁸ “I mailed it in time” or “my online bill pay sent it before the deadline” are routinely denied. The postmark date is what counts.

How the Assessor Turns Your Numbers Into an Assessed Value

Unlike real estate, business personal property in California is not subject to Proposition 13’s acquisition-value rules. Your equipment and fixtures are reassessed at current market value every year.⁹ The assessor does not send someone to inspect each desk and drill press. Instead, the county applies standardized valuation factors from Assessors’ Handbook Section 581 to the original costs you reported on Schedule A.

Each factor combines two adjustments into one multiplier: a price index that accounts for inflation since you bought the item, and a depreciation percentage that reflects age and wear. Multiplying original cost by the factor for the acquisition year produces the estimated market value.¹⁰ Different equipment categories use different factor tables based on expected useful life.

The factors are a rebuttable presumption. If you believe your equipment is worth less than the formula says — because it is obsolete, damaged, or in a declining market — you can present evidence of actual market value. That evidence matters most if you decide to appeal.

Appealing an Assessment

If the assessed value looks too high, start informally by contacting the assessor’s office. Many disputes are resolved once you show a factual error: wrong acquisition year, incorrect cost, or equipment disposed of before the lien date.

If that does not fix it, file a formal appeal using BOE Form 305-AH, the Assessment Appeal Application.¹¹ The regular filing period runs from July 2 through either September 15 or December 1, depending on whether your county’s assessor mails assessment notices to all taxpayers by August 1. Check your county’s specific deadline. Filing one day late forfeits your appeal rights for that year.

The strongest evidence for a business personal property appeal is usually recent arms-length sale prices for comparable equipment, an independent appraisal, or documentation of functional obsolescence the standard factors do not capture. The county assessment appeals board can adjust the value if you demonstrate the assessor’s figure exceeds fair market value.

Records to Keep

Keep your fixed asset register, purchase invoices, lease agreements, and copies of each year’s filed 571-L for at least four years. That is how far back an escape assessment can reach. The assessor can request to examine your general ledger and related accounting records at any time for assessment purposes, and your statement already tells them where those records are stored.¹ If you cannot produce supporting documentation during an audit, the assessor has authority to estimate values and apply penalties retroactively.

1
Justia. California Code Revenue and Taxation Code 441-470
2
California Legislative Information. California Code Revenue and Taxation Code 441
3
California State Board of Equalization. BOE-571-L Business Property Statement
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California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Personal Property – Frequently Asked Questions
5
Santa Cruz County. Business Property Statement for 2026
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San Francisco Office of the Assessor-Recorder. Form 571 L – R – STR Business Property Statement Manual
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Office of the Assessor, Santa Clara County. 571-L Business Property Statement Filing
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California Legislative Information. California Code Revenue and Taxation Code 463
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California State Board of Equalization. California Property Tax – An Overview
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California State Board of Equalization. Assessors’ Handbook Section 581 – Equipment and Fixtures Index, Percent Good and Valuation Factors
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California State Board of Equalization. Assessment Appeals