Kumar

Alex Kumar and the custodians of records of Best Vineyard Valley Inn and Cloverdale Oaks Inn (collectively Petitioners) petition this court for extraordinary relief from an order of the Sonoma County Superior Court. The superior court ordered Petitioners to comply with legislative subpoenas issued by the City of Cloverdale (City) for the production of business records necessary for auditing their compliance with the City’s transient occupancy tax (TOT). We shall deny the relief sought.

Background

In 1969, the City of Cloverdale passed ordinance No. 257 (the Ordinance) and enacted its TOT on rooms occupied in hotels, inns, motels and other lodgings for a period of less than 30 consecutive calendar days. Transients pay a tax of 10 percent of the rent charged by the operator (proprietor) of the facility. The Ordinance requires operators to collect the tax and provide returns to the City’s tax administrator showing total rents charged and received and the amount of tax collected for transient occupancies. The Ordinance requires operators to keep and preserve for a period of three years all records necessary to determine the TOT the operator should have collected and paid to…