End in Sight for Property Tax Reval in Hart County, Caime Says

Hart County is getting closer to closing the books on what has been a years long saga to bring five years of property tax digests up to date and in compliance with the State.

Now that the property revals have been completed by the Hart County Tax Assessor’s office and most of the digests dating back to 2009 have been put to bed, the process of collecting those property taxes and issuing refunds for over payments has fallen to the Hart County Tax Commissioner’s office.  And it has been a big, complicated and sometimes overwhelming job.

Next week, the Board of Commissioners is expected to get an update from Hart County Tax Commissioner Burley Pierce on where the county is financially.

In May, commission chair Joey Dorsey asked Pierce to be ready to give the board an update this month.

County administrator Jon Caime said the county needs some questions answered.

“We really don’t know where are right now,” he said. “But that’s been the question all along: where are we? How much has been collected? How much has been sent out in refunds? The numbers kept changing.”

That, Caime said, had to do with the software used by the tax commissioner’s office, which he said is outdated and was not built to handle multiple tax years and refunds all at the same time.

According to Caime, the county and school board had not received any tax revenue money for months because the property tax refund checks had to go out first.   That left both the county and school board worried about how much money they will have to work with to provide services.

With help from the software company TBS and personnel in the county commission office, Caime said Pierce was finally able to distribute some $900,000 in tax revenue checks to the county and school system on Tuesday.

But Caime said there four areas are yet to be resolved.

They include, determining where the county is in collecting the $4-million in back taxes owed from 2009 to 2013, completion of an audit of the 5,200 refund checks that went out, how much the county and the board of education can expect from future tax collection revenue, and how much in refunds is still owed to new property owners.

Caime said the county is now turning its attention to collecting five years worth of  back taxes.

“Now it’s to the point where we’re done with all this mess and it’s time to collect the back taxes from people had not paid their taxes,” he said. “That’s ’09, ’10, ’11, ’12, and ’13. That’s almost four million dollars in taxes that haven’t been collected. That’s important to know. These are people who, for whatever reason, haven’t paid their taxes.”

Additionally, the county still owes $659,754 in refunds to property owners who overpaid on their temporary tax bills during those years.

Not knowing if or when the county will receive that back tax revenue and not having the exact figures of where the county stands financially, Caime said, is making it difficult if not impossible for the county to set the millage, which could potentially increase depending on how much back tax revenue the county is able to recoup.

But Caime said Tuesday, the end to five years of Hart County’s property tax nightmare is almost over.

“We have broken new ground. No other county in the state has ever had to go through what we have just gone through,” he said.

You can hear more on the Hart County property tax situation this Sunday on 92.1’s Community Forum.