Residents of Bel Air, Maryland, may be checking their mailboxes quite a bit this time of year looking for property tax bills. Officials have advised that all of the 4,300 property tax account bills for the town were subject to delays this month due to problems processing and mailing the bills.
The bills typically show up in mailboxes towards the beginning of the first week of July. This year, however, due to delays at the printer and the post office, those bills were delayed by as much as two weeks and some taxpayers might still have not received their bills. The township encourages those folks to contact the finance office to receive a copy of the bill.
A late bill doesn’t give you an excuse not to pay on time, however, according to Finance Director Lisa Moody. The normal September 30 due date still applies, as does the July 31 deadline for discount payments. Bills received after that due date are considered late and may be subject to interest and penalty.
In April of this year, the town approved a three-year no-bid contract with financial software company NDS to print and mail the town’s sewer and real estate tax bills. The arrangement was promoted as a means of saving time and money since previously, the county offices prepared and mailed the bills by hand. The cost to the township for the new contract is about $15,500 per year – and apparently, a lot of agita.
Of course, if this whole episode sounds like deja vu, you’re absolutely right: last month, the Town of Mount Kisco in New York advised that all of the 2013 property tax bills that were mailed out by the Town went missing at the Post Office.
