'Computer glitch' blamed for tax notice delays

By Lisa Majors-Duff

Some, but not all, of those in the leasehold category of billing received 2000 tax bills generated with 1999 values. More than a few of these were also minus the $60 landfill fee, said tax assessor Cecil Dills. Taxpayers fall into the leasehold category when they own a building on a tract of land owned by someone else.

His office discovered the mistake, Dills said, when some taxpayers pointed out that their bills were for less than the revaluation notices they received last March.

"By this time several bills had already been paid," Dills said. "After thinking about our options, we decided to produce an additional bill for the difference in value."

An "individual bill create" method was used in November to produce new bills for the difference plus the landfill fee, he said. But the final computer prompt, which asked for a "Y" to be keystroked if a bill was to be printed, produced the opposite effect, said Dills.

The updated information, which should have then been set to Total Bills of Fayetteville, the company that produces and mails the county's tax bills, did not arrive via electronic transmission, he said.

"In December we had some people coming in saying they didn't get their bills, but they knew it was due and wanted to take care of it," said Dills.

Those who did not come to the tax collection office on their own found out last month through a "second notice" that not only were their taxes due, but they also owed interest of 2.75 percent. Once the error was discovered, Dills began to investigate how it happened. That's when he said he remembered a representative of the software company, Keystone, had mentioned that one of the prompts produced an opposite effect than what was intended. But that statement was made, he said, in January, too late to fix the problem.

Much to his further chagrin, Dills found out from the N.C. Department of Revenue that the interest attached to the "second notices" cannot be refunded, even though the billing mistake is the county's. State statutes do not addresses a county being able to remove the interest, he said.

"I feel like maybe this is an outdated law," Dills said, "especially this day and age when we depend so much on computers. I feel like (the taxpayers) shouldn't have to pay it. I guess the only good thing is that the interest is not that much."

The highest interest payment on the affected bills is about $13, with the average running just over $2, he said.

Dills said last week he is still unsure why the original bills that when out in September had the wrong values. It could have happened when one type of information in a different software program was transferred to the Keystone software, he said.

"You can point the finger at the software company, but when it comes right down to it it's this office's fault," said Dills. "We have to explain it to the people, and we have to listen to them." Dills meet with county Manager Jay Denton and others Tuesday to discuss the problem and find a solution.

"It was a computer glitch," Denton said late Tuesday. "We've reviewed the problem and we know what to look out for during the next billing cycle."

"I'm going to see to it that this gets fixed before we do anything for this year," Dills said.

Back to Archive: 03/01/01.