A number of Callaway County taxpayers had an unwelcome surprise on their tax bill.
Each year, residents have to pay a late fee if they fail to turn the annual assessment form on time. This year, the number of taxpayers claiming they were incorrectly charged that late fee is through the roof. One post on the topic on the Facebook page "Fulton Mo: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" has gathered more than 60 comments.
"We've been getting a lot of calls," said Jody Paschal, the Callaway County assessor.
Despite the high volume of calls, Paschal said the actual number of people being charged a late fee is in line with previous years.
The assessment form goes out each year alongside the previous year's tax bill in mid-November. Taxpayers can add new property or remove old property they no longer possess. The forms are due back at the assessor's office by March 1. Then, in mid-March, the assessor's office sends out reminder postcards. There's a grace period until April 30, after which anyone who still hasn't turned their form in must pay a late fee, Paschal explained.
Todd Kemp, of Kingdom City, was among the area residents faced with a fee.
"I know we mailed (the form) in," he said Monday. "We do it every year. We've always paid our taxes on time."
He said he had to pay the late fee along with his taxes.
"I'm not asking for anyone's job; I'm not even asking for my money back, just an explanation," Kemp said.
Fulton resident Eric Alexander said he remembers mailing in his form - he works out of town, so the assessor's office is usually closed by the time he gets back to Fulton. Nevertheless, he said, he got a postcard from the assessor's office in March.
"I came in to fill one out, and they didn't have any spare forms," he said. "They expected me to have the form I already mailed."
When he received his tax bill in November, it included a $100 late fee, Alexander said, adding he "just paid it and moved on."
Meanwhile, Denise Wallace, of Fulton, said she mailed her assessment form in at the same time she paid her taxes. Wallace said she added a recently purchased vehicle, but when her tax bill arrived in November, the vehicle wasn't included.
"They apparently did not receive that and actually said that I did it online, which I have never done and didn't even know you could do," she wrote in an email to the Sun. "They said I put no changes. I was charged a fee of about $30 plus the difference in the taxes in the car that I had."
Paschal said the office's online system didn't even exist during the previous filing season.
Wallace said she knows "about eight" people who had similar problems with their assessments.
Assessor's response
Paschal said, despite the seemingly higher amount of complaints, this year isn't much different from previous years.
"In the past five years, we sent out an average of 5,012 second notice (postcards) per year," he said Tuesday. "This year we sent 5,126. The numbers line up to where they should be."
The actual number of second notices seems to vary by a couple hundred each year (as does the number of assessment forms sent out, which ranges from 19,000-20,500). Numbers provided by the assessor's office show 5,126 second notices shown in 2019 (of 19,769 taxpayers) and 4,776 in 2018 (of 19,903 taxpayers), compared to 5,764 in 2016 (20,582 taxpayers).
If numerous forms had gone missing, Paschal would expect a larger spike in the number of second notices sent by his office, he explained.
It's hard to prove whether or not those who claim to have sent their forms in on time actually did so. Paschal said people who drop off their form in person are welcome to request a copy, but that's not applicable to people who submit forms via mail. Likewise, the new e-file system sends a receipt via email.
However, Paschal said, he can be fairly certain those forms didn't make it to his office by the March 1 deadline. The assessor's office keeps track of the second notices it sends and to whom.
"I went through the people who were commenting on Facebook, and all of them got a second notice," he said. "They did get mailed out. We're doing everything we can to let people know."
It's possible, he granted, that a small percentage of forms might get lost in the mail. Sometimes they come in unreadably damaged; once, memorably, one arrived two years late, he said.
"We don't guarantee the mail," he said.
Whatever the reasoning, if the office doesn't receive the form by the April 30 final deadline, they're required by statute to assess a fine. The fine's amount depends on the taxpayer's property's assessed valuation and ranges from $15-$105, Paschal said.
Paschal's office can only waive the fine in a few circumstances, including if the taxpayer has a copy of their receipt from e-filing or hand-delivering their assessment form. It will also be waived in cases when it was mistakenly charged to a taxpayer who's lived in the county for less than a year or is paying taxes for the first time.