Hamilton County Trustee Bill Hullander reports early success implementing a plan that allows taxpayers the option of paying their property taxes in installments.
Though former Trustee Carl Levi, whom Hullander defeated in the May primary, warned during the county elections that the plan would cost the county by requiring more personnel, Hullander reports that it hasn’t cost anything extra.
Since tax bills went out in October, he said, more than $122,000 has come in from people making partial payments.
Hullander reports that 249 taxpayers have used the plan since September. Before that, people had to pay their property tax in a lump sum.
“If you owed $1,000, if you did not have every penny of it, you couldn’t pay nothing,” Hullander said.
The only expense for the new payment system was new software that allows people to pay any amount they want as often as they want on their property taxes, Hullander said. And even that wasn’t an extra expense, he said.
“The county did the software,” Hullander said. “They were putting in a new software system anyway.”
Taxes are due at the end of February each year for the previous year. Property owners can start making partial payments in October with no interest added, he said.
People can pay their taxes in advance by visiting the trustee’s downtown Chattanooga office at 625 Georgia Ave.
Hullander said he sought advice about the program from Charlie Cardwell, the trustee for Davidson County and Nashville metropolitan government, who is also president of the state County Officials Association.
Cardwell said Davidson has accepted partial payments for many years. He said the system is a “win-win” for the taxpayer and county government.
“What we have found is that taxpayers, if they can make partial pays during the tax period, then a lot of times they do not have to go into their savings,” Cardwell said. “We also have found businesses like it because they don’t have to go into their reserve cash.”
Blake Fontenay, a spokesman for the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office, said the comptroller must review and comment on partial payment plans before they’re implemented. He said the office received the first partial payment plan in 1995.
“There are over 50 counties in the state that are currently collecting partial payments of property taxes,” Fontenay said.