26. April 2012 by admin.

In Baltimore many City property owners may have a hard time comprehending the size of their tax bills, but the bills themselves should make more sense when the new batch goes out in the mail in a couple of months. City tax bills are getting something of a makeover. “We are in the process of redesigning some elements of the tax bill to the extent that our current systems allow,” mayoral spokesman Ryan O’Doherty said this week in an email.

O’Doherty said details won’t be available for another couple weeks, but added: “We are generally pleased with the efforts the city plans to implement this year to make bills more transparent.”  Their property tax billing software should be supporting this effort.

Vague wording has confused some taxpayers, particularly when it comes to property tax credits. The Homestead Property Tax Credit, which effectively caps annual tax increases for owner-occupied homes, appears on bills not as a homestead credit but an “assessment credit.”  A variety of other breaks – including the historic rehab credit and the new construction credit – aren’t listed individually but instead show up under the catch-all “special credit" category.

O’Doherty has said that itemizing breaks that fall under the “special credit” label would require “extensive re-programming” by the city. “The system is very old and the City is investing in new software in the future that will help us provide additional transparency on tax bills,” he said.

None of this matters, of course, unless people actually read their tax bills — something that can easily be overlooked when a mortgage company pays property taxes out of escrow.

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25. April 2012 by admin.

One feature of property tax billing software is that it has to keep track of appeals against an assessment. In New York state, for instance, anyone can contest the assessed value of a property, on which property taxes are based. To the distress of local governments, many are appealing tax bills at a time when values are falling - forcing municipalities to deal with shaved tax collections.

In some cases, property owners who have successfully appealed might simply agree to a new assessment, and at times governments have spread settlements over several years.

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24. April 2012 by admin.

In Australia the total of property taxes has increased around 75% in the past 10 years:

Property related taxes generated by their property tax billing software remain the largest source of revenue for local and state governments. Despite the deteriorating property market conditions in 2010-11 income from property taxes rose to new highs over the 2010/11 financial year.

Over the 2010-11 financial year, state and local governments received more than $33 billion in taxes from property related channels which was a record amount. Property related taxes accounted for 47.3% of all state and local government tax revenue, down from 48.2% over the previous financial year. Despite the softer housing market conditions and ongoing weakness in the commercial property sector, total property related tax revenue increased by 4.6% over the year. This was following a record increase of 14.3% over the 2009-10 financial year.

It is somewhat surprising to see that the total value of property related taxation revenue increased over the year, especially when you consider that the nation’s largest asset class (residential property) recorded weaker conditions. Our data shows that the total value of residential property transactions in 2010-11 fell by -17% compared with the previous financial year. Data also shows that over the financial year capital city home values fell by -1.4% and transaction volumes for homes were -20% lower than over the previous year. So how did State and Local Government possibly lift revenue?

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24. April 2012 by admin.

In Illinois Cook County commissioners on Tuesday adopted a watered-down plan for government offices to work on streamlining the property tax process, after Board President Toni Preckwinkle said a proposal to create a single county tax administrator would violate state law.

The version the board passed calls on county offices with a hand in setting, collecting and issuing exemptions or appeals of the county’s taxes to get together to figure out whether a single office can perform their functions, and with what property tax billing software.

The assessor, clerk, recorder of deeds, treasurer and state’s attorney will be required to report within two months on their progress in reaching an agreement on how to consolidate the tax authority.  The compromise plan came after Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston, introduced a proposal ordering the assessor, clerk, recorder and treasurer to get together and create a new tax office.

Preckwinkle came out against that, saying the county doesn’t have the authority, and state statutes require certain tax responsibilities to be performed by each office.

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23. April 2012 by admin.

Property tax billing software should highlight the unpaid property taxes and support the collection effort.

Philadelphia initiated a highly successful tax amnesty program in 2010 and also reorganized the Sheriff’s Office. Philadelphia has subsequently been ramping up its property-tax collection efforts, doubling the number of delinquent properties taken to sheriff’s sale and collecting far more tax revenue without resorting to the expensive tax-sale process.

With three months left in the fiscal year, the Revenue Department has collected $7 million in delinquent taxes. In all of fiscal 2010, we collected just $3.9 million. Taxpayers are doing what they should have all along. To avoid sheriff’s sale, they are paying the city in full or setting up payment agreements. And compliance rates from our increased monthly tax-sale filings are much higher than expected.

The goal is not to sell properties. Philadelphia want property owners to pay their taxes and water bills, and that’s what many are now doing, which in turn is why 600 properties have not been sent to sheriff’s sale.

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23. April 2012 by admin.

A package of eight bills was introduced in the Michigan Senate recently, to phase out the personal property tax for industrial properties. It would also provide an exemption for small commercial properties.  However it isn’t universally popular. 

The Isabella County Board of Commissioners voted to oppose the legislation that would eliminate the state’s personal property tax. The county’s resolution, which passed unanimously, stated the bills would reduce revenues to the county by $384,888 beginning in 2013.

“Such a revenue loss would have a devastating impact on the ability of local units of government to provide critical community services,” Commissioner David Ling read from the resolution.

Governor Rick Snyder’s administration supports the bills. “The proposal is designed to encourage economic growth in Michigan, by reducing the personal property tax burden on many Michigan businesses,” said Terry Stanton, a spokesman for Snyder.

Lost revenue will be replaced by the elimination of tax credits, like the Michigan Business tax, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley told local government leaders in April. However, Ling said that will not fully reimburse the county.

The resolution urges state legislators to “actively and vigorously oppose any attempts to eliminate the personal property tax without full and guaranteed replacement.”  Commissioner James Moreno said the state legislators have been trying to reduce the county’s funding for the past 10 years for services like public safety.

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21. April 2012 by admin.

Fairfax County has suspended work on the last leg of a nearly $43 million contract to overhaul its computer systems after technical problems threatened to push the project further over budget, county officials said Thursday.

The ambitious effort — the implementation of which had been overseen by the man recently appointed county executive, Edward L. Long Jr. — has been marred by delays and glitches, according to an April 6 letter sent to the software company from the county’s Department of Purchasing & Supply Management.

In the letter, the county advised SAP Public Services of its intent to suspend all work on the third phase of its Fairfax County Unified System project, known as FOCUS. The new system is intended to save money by consolidating purchasing and other administrative procedures in a single database serving both the county and Fairfax County Public Schools.

The county decided to suspend work after the software company requested “extraordinary additional costs” for the third phase, even as the county struggles to iron out problems with earlier phases, according to the letter. SAP’s request to bill an additional 11,000 hours for technical support — well above the 7,300 hours included in the base contract — is “improper,” the county says in its letter.

The letter also notes that bugs in the new system caused a four-month delay from its scheduled launch last July and have continued to pop up since the system became operational Nov. 7. “The simple process of ordering paper is now a major ordeal,” Supervisor Pat S. Herrity (R-Springfield) said.

Cathy A. Muse, a county purchasing agent, said Thursday that SAP’s request for additional hours for the third phase would cost an estimated $3.9 million. That’s in addition to the $3.4 million extra the county agreed to pay in September, increasing the total cost to $42.4 million. Of that, the county already has paid $17.5 million, Muse said.

David Molchany, a deputy county executive who assumed control of the FOCUS project last week, said the county is weighing whether to proceed. Members of the Board of Supervisors said that such a massive overhaul was bound to encounter some glitches, but they blamed SAP for continuing problems and said it should not reflect badly on Long.

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21. April 2012 by admin.

If the property tax billing software is to do its job accurately, the underlying valuations must be correct.  However, as reports of a recent audit in New York City has shown, that isn’t always the case.

The Bloomberg administration failed to warn homeowners about major changes in the way the city assessed the value of co-ops and condominiums, contributing to outrage over a sharp, unexpected spike in some people’s property taxes last year, according to a pair of audits released on Thursday by Comptroller John C. Liu.

Mr. Liu also concluded that the agency in charge of those assessments, the Finance Department, had relied too much on a flawed new computer system that, in some cases, compared a building’s market value to the value of disparate properties, like a parking garage or a building on the other side of a borough.

The audit findings added to a controversy that was especially pointed in Queens last year, when homeowners learned that the assessed values of their units had risen by as much as 147 percent, leading to an increase in their property taxes.

At first, the Finance Department defended its figures, arguing that co-ops in Queens had been undervalued in past years. Later, however, the department acknowledged a problem, citing a computer error and saying that the wrong data had been given to assessors for use in calculating property values.

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14. April 2012 by admin.

A current court case in the US highlights the risk of DIY software selection and implementation.  The case is about ERP software but applies equally to water billing software or tax billing software.  Group Manufacturing Services, a contract manufacturer for sheet metal and plastic fabrication, began speaking to Epicor about a potential software purchase in March 2011, according to news reports about the company’s lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

Epicor representatives showed up the next month and conducted an on-site inspection meant to determine how well its software would meet the company’s needs, it adds. Those Epicor employees told the company that the Epicor 9 software was "a perfect fit," and that "the installation process would be smooth, straightforward and timely given Epicor’s expertise," the lawsuit stated. No "significant customizations" would be needed and any minor tweaks could be done by Group Manufacturing’s own employees, Epicor allegedly said, according to the lawsuit.

Based on those representations, Group Manufacturing signed a deal with Epicor for the software and implementation and has so far paid it about $70,000, it added. However, despite Epicor’s pledges, the project "consumed countless hours of Plaintiff’s staff time, was sporadic, and problems endlessly erupted throughout," according to the lawsuit.

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12. April 2012 by admin.

One of the functions property tax billing software should provide is the ability to defer property taxes.  For those who are entitled to defer – typically seniors – all property taxes are not raised against the property until the resident dies or sells.  At hat point all of the property taxes are raised at once, dating back to when the property tax deferral first came into effect, and the new ownership is not registered until the city gets its property taxes paid.

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