County Gives New Look to Its Tax Bills
Property tax payers should expect a little jolt in coming weeks when their tax bills arrive in the mail--and it won’t have anything to do with the amount they have to pay.
For the first time in more than a decade, the county has completely redesigned its property tax bills in an effort to avoid payment errors and to help property owners understand how their taxes are calculated.
The new documents include graphic icons, easy-to-read print and personalized messages that inform taxpayers about unpaid balances and property value corrections. About 735,000 bills will be mailed out beginning Sept. 20.
County officials said the redesigned bills are a major improvement over the old forms, which every year prompted thousands of calls from confused property owners who couldn’t figure out what the columns of figures represented and how much they should pay.
“We’ve had a lot of complaints that the bills were hard to understand, so we tried to create a user-friendly document,” said Treasurer-Tax Collector John M.W. Moorlach. “It’s a big change. But we think the response will be positive.”
Property owners should receive their bills by Oct. 11. Taxes are paid in two installments, the first due on Nov. 1, the second on Feb. 1. The property tax bills for 1996-97 will total about $1.9 billion, a slight increase over last year.
Moorlach and others at the treasurer’s office spent months redesigning the bills after examining forms from other counties.
“We took the best of everybody’s and put it together into one bill,” said Mahesh Patel, a senior systems analyst. “We feel we can save someone a phone call by giving people more information on the form.”
