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A taxing time: End of year is busy for treasurer's office

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Photo by Bill Olmsted

City of Janesville employee Jim Peterson organizes thousands of property tax bills that will be mailed to city residents over the next few days.

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Vicki Brown

JANESVILLE — Vicki Brown's office soon will be a busy place, as it always is late in the calendar year.

The Rock County treasurer is responsible for collecting first installment property taxes from property owners in 20 of the 29 municipalities in the county, and 2010 tax bills soon will be in the mail.

Later this month, Brown's office will start collecting money used to support a variety of municipalities and education systems in the county. In most cases, taxes are due Jan. 31 and July 31, but many property owners try to make payments before the end of the year for income tax purposes.

In a perfect world, those payments will add up to the full levy, which for the 2010 tax year hasn't been determined but last year was about $230 million.

But it's not a perfect world, and the full levy won't be collected.

It never is.

"We generally have about 3 to 4 percent outstanding every year," Brown said.

The tax payment rate of 96 to 97 percent of the levy has been fairly constant, despite a recent recession and growing tax bills. While delinquencies are up, they're up only slightly, Brown said.

"The bottom line, and I'm hearing it from other county treasurers, is that delinquencies are not out of line with other years," Brown said.

For example, as of Oct. 31, local payment rates on 2009 taxes range from a low of 95.4 percent in Edgerton to 98.6 percent in the town of Avon.

Rock County property taxpayers in the city of Brodhead have paid every penny of their 2009 taxes, Brown said, noting that the 100 percent payment rate is attributable to so few county parcels in the county.

Taxpayers in the city of Janesville had satisfied 97.1 percent of their property tax obligations by the end of October.

Long arm of the web

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue doesn't know what percentage of local taxpayers are current on their obligations to the state, but the department continues to make their names visible.

The department launched a website in 2006 that lists the names and addresses of people and businesses delinquent on state income, sales and corporate taxes.

When the site launched, it contained only names of people who owed at least $20,000 in taxes, interest and fees. Lawmakers have since passed legislation that lowered the threshold to $5,000.

Janesville is represented on the site. Through Oct. 5, the website indicated 223 people or companies with local addresses owed the state more than $7 million in back taxes.

One Janesville man made the department's list of "Top 100 Delinquent Taxpayers." Stephen Schuler owes $821,000, and holds the 30th spot on the list. The business Schuler is associated with, Country Furniture by Schulers, owes another $565,000, placing it 84th on the list.

Statewide, nearly 20,000 taxpayers owe more than $770 million, with some accounts going back 10 years.

Spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said the department has collected more than $108 million since it started the website in 2006. When it launched, state officials estimated it would bring in $1.5 million a year.

Marquis said the number of delinquent taxpayers has not grown during the recent economic downturn.

"Taxes aren't pleasant, but people want to do the right thing," Marquis said, adding that the department takes a number of steps to work with people before adding their names to the list.

"Of course, we try to collect in full wherever we can or work out a payment plan," she said. "Finances are tough, and we understand that.

"This is not a zero-to-60 deal to put people on the website."