How to Fill Out and File the California Business Property Statement (Form 571-L)

To fill out California Form 571-L, pull your original purchase records for every piece of taxable business equipment, supplies, and leased property you owned at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, enter each item by acquisition year and installed cost in the correct schedule, sign the declaration, and return it to your county assessor by April 1. A statement postmarked by May 7 is still treated as timely; after that, a 10 percent penalty attaches to the assessed value of anything unreported.¹²

The form is a snapshot. Everything on it describes what you owned, leased, or had on your premises on the lien date, valued at cost as of that morning. Property sold, scrapped, or moved out of the county before January 1 does not belong on this year’s statement.

Records to Pull Before You Open the Form

Almost every line ties back to original cost, so the documents you need are purchase invoices, asset ledgers, depreciation schedules, lease agreements, and disposal records. For each item of taxable property owned on January 1, you’ll need the year it was acquired and the full installed cost, including sales tax, freight, and installation. The assessor applies depreciation factors keyed to acquisition year, so a 2019 purchase reported as 2023 produces less depreciation and a bigger tax bill.

Supplies on hand — stationery, janitorial products, fuel, chemicals, medical or legal supplies used in a service practice — are reported at current replacement cost rather than what you originally paid.¹ Supplies that become part of a product you manufacture or sell are inventory, not supplies, and stay off the form entirely.

For leased equipment on your premises, pull each lease agreement and note the year of acquisition, year of manufacture, lease contract number, total installed cost to purchase, and annual rent. Read the agreement to see whether you or the lessor carries the property tax obligation. Both parties can be asked to report leased equipment, and the assessor decides who is actually assessed.³¹

If the form arrived preprinted with an outdated address or business name, correct it directly on the form: strike through the wrong information with a single line, write the correction, and note the effective date of the change. For a business that was sold, include the new owner’s name and mailing address.⁴

What Not to Report

Including exempt property inflates your assessed value. Leave the following off:

Business inventory — anything held for sale or lease in the ordinary course of business, including raw materials that become part of a finished product.⁵
Application software on physical media, such as word processors, accounting packages, and design tools. Basic operational programs that make the computer function are still taxable, and so is application software bundled in an unitemized package sale.⁵
Property covered by a low-value ordinance. Under Revenue and Taxation Code section 155.20, a county board of supervisors can exempt personal property with a full value at or below $10,000. Not every county has adopted this, and the threshold varies where it exists.⁶

Qualifying nonprofits may claim the welfare exemption on eligible property; business leagues, chambers of commerce, fraternities, and mutual benefit societies generally do not qualify even with a 501(c)(3) letter.⁷

Completing the Form

The 571-L has three main parts. Counties post the current form on their assessor websites, and many demand-to-file letters direct you to an online portal instead of paper.

Part I: General Information

Enter your business name, mailing address, property location, phone number, type of business, and ownership structure — sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, LLC, and so on.¹ If the property sits at an address different from where you get mail, list both. The assessor uses Part I to match your filing to the correct parcel and account.

Part II: Property Belonging to You

This is where you declare owned property. It splits into two schedules.

Schedule A covers equipment: machinery, furniture, computers, tools, and similar items you own. List each item under the year it was first acquired, at its full installed cost. Leased equipment does not go here.¹

Schedule B covers buildings, building improvements, leasehold improvements, land improvements, and land development costs not already carried on the county’s real property roll. Tenant improvements and structures on leased land are the common items that surface here.¹

Line 1 of Part II asks for supplies on hand at replacement cost. Other line items on the pre-labeled form capture categories like construction in progress and licensed vehicles that may be exempt.

Part III: Property Belonging to Others

Report anything on your premises that someone else owns: leased equipment, vendor-owned vending machines, government-owned property. For each piece of leased equipment, enter the year of acquisition, year of manufacture, description, lease contract number, total installed cost, and annual rent. Mark whether you or the lessor is contractually responsible for the tax.¹

Lease-purchase and capitalized lease equipment have their own sub-categories. Once you make the final payment on either type, that cost moves from Part III onto Schedule A or B in Part II the following year. If nothing on your premises belongs to someone else, write “NONE” rather than leaving Part III blank.

Sign and date the declaration at the end. An unsigned statement can draw the same penalties as a missing one.¹

How to Submit

You have three ways to file:

Your county assessor’s e-filing portal. Many counties now require or strongly prefer electronic filing and give you a BIN or account number on the demand-to-file letter to log in with.⁸
The statewide Standard Data Record system at calbpsfile.org, useful if you file for multiple locations across multiple counties in one batch upload.⁹¹⁰
Paper by mail or fax to the county assessor’s office. If you’re filing near the deadline, send it by certified mail so you have a dated postmark.

Property physically located in more than one county is reported county by county — a separate 571-L (or SDR entry) for each county where taxable property sat on January 1.⁵

After the assessor receives your filing, staff review the reported costs, apply the current valuation tables and depreciation factors, and set the assessed value that feeds your later property tax bill.

Deadline and Late-Filing Penalties

The statutory due date is April 1. A statement postmarked or received by May 7 is treated as timely, and if May 7 falls on a weekend or legal holiday, a postmark on the next business day still counts.⁸

Miss May 7 and Revenue and Taxation Code section 463 adds a penalty of 10 percent of the assessed value of any unreported taxable personal property. The same penalty attaches to incomplete filings where property was left off.²

Skipping the filing entirely triggers a worse outcome. Under Revenue and Taxation Code section 501, when the assessor identifies unreported personal property and the owner still doesn’t file after a written request, the assessor estimates the value and adds a 25 percent penalty to that estimate.¹¹ Estimates run high.

The 10 percent penalty can be abated. You apply to the county assessment appeals board (or board of equalization) and must show the late filing was due to reasonable cause and not willful neglect, within the time allowed for filing assessment reduction applications.² Genuine emergencies — a medical event on the deadline, the death of an immediate family member, documented theft of mail — are the sort of circumstances that qualify. Vacation, financial hardship, and a clean prior filing history generally do not. Failing to receive the assessor’s notice is not grounds for relief on its own.

Keep Your Records After You File

Under Revenue and Taxation Code section 469, county assessors audit a significant number of businesses with locally assessable trade fixtures and tangible personal property each year. The auditor verifies the costs, acquisition dates, and disposals you reported on the 571-L against your books.¹²

Hold on to purchase invoices, asset registers, depreciation schedules, lease agreements, and disposal records for as long as you own the property and for a reasonable period after. The Franchise Tax Board’s guidance is to keep property records as long as they are needed to figure the basis of the property.¹³ If the assessor asks during an audit and you can’t produce the underlying records, the assessor can revalue based on whatever information is available, which rarely favors the taxpayer.

1
California State Board of Equalization. BOE-571-L Business Property Statement
2
California Legislative Information. California Code Revenue and Taxation Code 463
3
Los Angeles County Assessor. Business Property Statement Filing
4
San Mateo County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder & Elections. Business Property Statement Form 571-L FAQs
5
California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Personal Property Frequently Asked Questions
6
California State Board of Equalization. Low-Value Ordinance Exemption
7
California State Board of Equalization. Property Tax Welfare Exemption Publication 149
8
Santa Clara County Assessor. 571-L Business Property Statement Filing
9
Contra Costa County, CA Official Website. Business Personal Property
10
Ventura County Assessor. e-SDR
11
California State Board of Equalization. Assessors Handbook Section 501 Basic Appraisal
12
California State Board of Equalization. Business Property Audits
13
Franchise Tax Board. Keeping Your Tax Records