Custom page for filtering posts, WordPress is going 404 for any year other than the current year in the URL (&year=)

I have a page I am calling news/. It is not set as the blog page and nor do I want it to be the blog page. I just want several dropdowns with a filter button that will display posts with a pagination that match the dropdown criteria, otherwise display all posts in the list. Here is the code:

get_header(); 
$category = $_GET['category'] ?? '';
$tag = $_GET['tag'] ?? '';
$year = isset($_GET['year']) ? intval($_GET['year']) : 0;
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
$args = array(
'post_type'      => 'post',
'orderby'        => 'date',
'order'          => 'DESC',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'paged'          => $paged,
'category_name'  => $category,
'tag'            => $tag,
);
if ($year) {
$args['date_query'] = array(
'year' => $year,
);
}
$query = new WP_Query($args);
?>
<?php
$categories = get_categories(array(
'orderby' => 'name',
'order'   => 'ASC'
));
$tags = get_tags(array(
'orderby' => 'name',
'order'   => 'ASC'
));
$years = $wpdb->get_col("
SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date)
FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE post_status = 'publish'
ORDER BY post_date DESC
");
var_dump($years);
var_dump($year);
?>
<form action="<?php echo esc_url(get_permalink()); ?>" method="get">
<label for="category">Select a category:</label>
<select name="category" id="category">
<option value="">All Articles</option>
<?php foreach ($categories as $category) : ?>
<option value="<?php echo esc_attr($category->slug); ?>" <?php selected(isset($_GET['category']) && $_GET['category'] === $category->slug); ?>>
<?php echo esc_html($category->name); ?>
</option>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</select>
<label for="tag">Select a tag:</label>
<select name="tag" id="tag">
<option value="">Tags</option>
<?php foreach ($tags as $tag) : ?>
<option value="<?php echo esc_attr($tag->slug); ?>" <?php selected(isset($_GET['tag']) && $_GET['tag'] === $tag->slug); ?>>
<?php echo esc_html($tag->name); ?>
</option>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</select>
<label for="year">Select a year:</label>
<select name="year" id="year">
<option value="">All Years</option>
<?php foreach ($years as $archive_year) : ?>
<?php var_dump($years); ?>
<option value="<?php echo esc_attr($archive_year); ?>" <?php selected(isset($_GET['year']) && $_GET['year'] === $archive_year); ?>>
<?php echo esc_html($archive_year); ?>
</option>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</select>
<input type="submit" value="Filter">
</form>
<?php if ($query->have_posts()) : while ($query->have_posts()) : $query->the_post(); ?>
<!-- Display your post content here -->
<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
<div class="post-content">
<?php the_content(); ?>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<!-- Add pagination links -->
<?php
global $wp_query;
$total_pages = $wp_query->max_num_pages;
if ($total_pages > 1) {
$current_page = max(1, get_query_var('paged'));
echo '<div class="pagination">';
echo paginate_links(array(
'base'      => get_pagenum_link(1) . '%_%',
'format'    => 'page/%#%',
'current'   => $current_page,
'total'     => $total_pages,
'prev_text' => '«',
'next_text' => '»',
));
echo '</div>';
}
?>
<?php else : ?>
<p>No posts found</p>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
<?php
get_footer();

The issue is that for any url, it is working fine as long as the URL is:
https://site/news/?category=&year=2023
Or
https://site/news/?category=&year=
or any URL without the year parameter
The moment you put in:
https://site/news/?category=&year=2022 or any other year, 2022, 2021, 2020 it goes to a 404 page.

If I put a year in via hard code in the above code, but don't have 2022, 2021, 2020 in the url, it will filter fine.

I am assuming this is an issue with the Settings > Permalinks in my WordPress, but I am not understanding how to set it up. Currently it looks like this:

Custom Structure: /%category%/%postname%/

I noticed if I just selected the first option, other years would redirect to the traditional wordpress search and not my custom news/ filter page. I do not want this. I don't care about the traditional WordPress search posts page/functions. I just want all years to filter in place on my custom news page along with the other criteria.

Certain query string parameters, including year, are considered "reserved" by WordPress, and using them might kick in undefined behavior, including possibly a 404 page. Unfortunately, the only location that I can find that documents this is on the register_taxonomy page, which is very much not obvious because the problem is system-wide, and not just related to taxonomy names.

> Avoiding the following reserved terms is particularly important if you are passing the term through the $_GET or $_POST array. Doing so can cause WordPress to respond with a 404 error without any other hint or explanation.

The fast and easy solution to this is to just pick a different parameter for the year, such as y. The longer and more complicated solution is to possibly hook into template_include, however I think that's too late and the query will already be setup, so instead you might have to have a dedicated rewrite rule instead.

If anyone else stumbles on this some day and you have a need for year, month and day, so you decide to use y, m and d for consistency, unfortunately m is also reserved, however month isn't.