- NEWS
- SPORTS
- BUSINESS
- ENTERTAINMENT
- LIFE
- TRAVEL
- OPINION
O.C. sent 60,000+ erroneous property tax bills
October 6th, 2009, 12:13 pm · 23 Comments · posted by Jeff Collins
Letters for impound accounts (Click to enlarge)
Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street announced that about 60,000 to 70,000 local property owners got tax bills last week that erroneously said they still owed property taxes — even though they already paid them with their monthly mortgage payment.
The Treasurer’s Office aborted the mailing of 843,000 tax bills last week after the problem was discovered, office spokesman Keith Rodenhuis said.
The notice, which appeared on the Treasurer’s Office Web site Monday night, blamed the mistake on “a computer programming error.”
The statement said that property owners were affected “in ZIP codes 92603-92679.”
That’s 33 of the county’s 83 major ZIP codes, affecting all or part of 14 cities and several unincorporated communities: Irvine, Huntington Beach, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Beach, El Toro, Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, Midway City, Aliso Viejo, Newport Coast, Newport Beach, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo, Trabuco Canyon, Coto de Caza, Dove Canyon, Portola Hills and Robinson Ranch.
Rodenhuis said the problem occurred when tax letters sent to property owners who already pay their taxes with their monthly mortgage payments — called impounds — failed to state that the tax bill was an “INFORMATION COPY” only.”
That made it appear that those property owners still had taxes due, when they had already paid them. He added:
“Due to the error, taxpayers with a impound account who were a part of the first three days of mailing received a standard bill that made no reference to … an impound account. As a result, there exists a risk of confusion and duplicate payment by the taxpayer.”
Street
Rodenhuis said the matter came to light after The Register requested statistics showing how many tax bills had been sent out. He discovered while reviewing the figures that there was an unexplained drop in the number of property owners paying impounds with their mortgages this year.
The Treasurer’s Office stopped shipping tax statements after Thursday’s batch went out, Rodenhuis said. The mailings are expected to resume later this week.
Taxpayers with impounds should have received letters like the one above, not the one below. (Click to enlarge)
Office staff have been notified of the problem and are working with individual taxpayers as they call in, and a recording has been placed on the department’s Tax Information Hotline to inform those calling in with questions, he said.
“The programming error has been identified and the problem has been fixed,” the Web site stated. “If you currently have an impound account, your lender will continue to pay the taxes on your behalf. Please retain the tax bill you received for information purposes.”
- What is an impound account and should you have one? Click HERE!
- Where do your local property tax dollars go? Click HERE!
Related news:
- Tax bills seeking $4.8 billion in the mail
- 15,000 owners fighting their property taxes
- O.C. tax values see biggest drop in 34 years
- $49 million more O.C. property tax going unpaid
- Late surge puts O.C. property tax payment up $141 million
- Late O.C. property taxes rise by $60 million
- Property tax due Thursday; collections $91 million behind
Ask the Assessor …
23 Comments
-
ADVERTISEMENT
-
-
Blog within a blog ...
-
HOW TO TRACK US
<!--
--> -
ADVERTISEMENT
TYPICAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS!
Darn it!
I’d much rather they suspend taxes for the year. You know; a taxpayer bailout.
That would be a “change” I’d support. I am quite tired of my taxes bailing out others.
My tax bill is at home so I can’t see it for my reference, but I’m not in one of those zip codes and pay into an impound account and I was really, really confused because I don’t think my bill says “INFORMATION COPY” only or anything about my impound account. I’m in 90631. Ithink it is more than just those few zip codes effected. I called my loan company to make sure that they would be paying because the letter was definitly confusing.
hah! What a slick way of overbilling. And if you asked for the overpayment back they’d tell you that they already spent it and will apply the overpayment to next year’s bill. hah! How much postage was wasted on this? 70,000 x .44 = $30,800. Take it out of Street’s paycheck!
good point… that’s a gross error that most would be seriously reprimanded for or even fired. Of course, just an apology from the Gov should suffice cause its not their money to steward.
programming error? probably offshored all these jobs.
Just for clarification:
Jeff (in the comment above) is not me.
No reflection on the comment, other than to say Jeff’s views do not necessarily reflect those of your blogger.
Your local McDonald’s is run more efficiently and competently than the County government.
“a computer programming error”. That a complete lie! There is no such thing! Someone screwed up or has deliberately programmed that so called “error”. How is it that they did not notice it? I would assume someone receiving such bill would complain, only to be given the run-around. It makes no sense! There should be a complete investigation on what was the REAL cause. Someone must be accounted for their action. Not to mention a complete waist of tax dollars for sending out the bogus notices.
There were more cities effected than they said. I live in La Habra (90631) and got one. It scared the heck outta me and I forgot to bring it with me to work to call and find out what was up!
This county treasurers office runs worse than any bank that has defaulted in the last ten years. And that doesn’t account for the criminal aspect during Mr. Citron’s tenure.
No Pride in this county government.
Government is only efficient when you owe THEM money. Then they seem to find motivation, brains and competence that is inexplicably absent the rest of the time.
I like to be a government employee, when a mistake is made, its cost will be charged back to taxpayers, while in private company I must be fired.
What??? pay my taxes twice, good luck…ain’t going to happen anytime soon : )
I guess this is scam from tax collector, the bill with the words INFORMATION COPY, it has been used before for impound accounts, why suddenly it disappears. Or this conspiracy work of few programmers to make them job security, to fix the change the made. This must be investigated by DA. Hello….
Typical Screw up. They seem to do things like this all the time.
I’m not suprised. No wonder this county is in debt.
wow - I am SHOCKED! can’t believe the tax collector is being shady in OC… no, not at all.
Thank GOD!! I was waiting for my mortgage broker to get back to me on this one, since I received the bill, but have an impound account. I was worried it was in addition to what I pay each month! Thank you for clearing this up!
There is about 40,000 tax bills without cortac number causing from the missing submit request file from Country Wide Cortac Company. Country Wide contact person did not communicate or follow up with system group on time to confirm number of tax bills they are interest in paying property taxes for 2009-2010 for impound accounts with request data file. All cortac companies did received a written procedures each year to follow with contact email and phone number of Tax Collector to confirm of processing request data file.
The missing of cortac info on each tax bills is not caused by programming error. This comment for clearing up all confusions before.
So now there are atleast 2 in 90631 that received the error. They need to update their response and fess up to the real number of people who recieved these bills in error.
Now it makes 3 in 90631 - I dont think they really know how many people received this bill - hope no-one paid their bill twice.
Another Chriss Street blunder. The County isn’t doing well and all the extra costsincurred for this blunder to print, cost of the paper it was printed on, the envelopes, the postage, the list goes on and on.
And there will be no accountability.
Awesome. These are the people who will be running your healthcare soon.