SACRAMENTO—Domestic partners are entitled to the same tax breaks as married couples when they transfer ownership of property from one to the other, a California state appeals court said Oct. 2.

A three-judge panel ruled unanimously that provisions of Proposition 13 that can allow significant increases in taxes when a home or property changes hands don’t apply to registered domestic partners.

Proposition 13, approved by voters in 1978, capped property taxes at 1 percent of a piece of land or building’s full cash value while allowing annual adjustments in that value of up to 2 percent to account for inflation.

But it also authorized county assessors to reassess property to its full value when there was a change of ownership.

Lawmakers later exempted property exchanges between married couples and parents and children from the definition of a change in ownership.

A state tax board in 2003 and the legislature in 2005 gave the same protection to domestic partners, a group that enjoys most of the legal benefits of marriage conferred by the state.

Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a gay rights group that intervened in the lawsuit on the side of the state, praised the ruling, saying it would protect domestic partners from “an incredibly unfair tax burden.”