Taxing
Sunday's paper edition of the News & Record will carry an article about eight elected officials who owe outstanding property taxes either personally and/or through their businesses. (It'll be in the B section if everything stays as it is now.) For those who don't remember, 2004 property tax bills were issued in July and payments were due to the Guilford County Tax Department by Jan. 5, 2005.
We typically do a story like this every spring, although we were prompted this time by a tip e-mailed to at least three of us at the paper regarding two of the officials in question. The information was interesting to us for couple reasons:
Out list of late-payers includes five county commissioners, two city council members and a school board member.
Being that we at Inside Scoop are big teases, we're not going to tell you who they are until tomorrow. But if you just can't wait, go looking for yourself at: http://www.co.guilford.nc.us/rweb/session/taxhome.html
That is the main page for Guilford County Tax Department information. To research who owes and who is paid up, you'll need the second link on the page titled "Tax Collection Information." (There's some technical information at the top of the page you'll want to read through. This system is a bit persnickety about what version of Java and what browser it's dealing with.)
Or, if you don't want to be geeking it up on a Saturday night, you can just wait for the morning paper. One of Scoop's minions will try to remember to post a link here to the online version of the story on Sunday morning.
Update: Here's the link to the story: http://www.news-record.com/news/local/taxes_011605.htm
Comments (2)
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Those 7% who don't pay on time are typically the same 7% every year. Steve Arnold, Katie Cashion, Deena Hayes, Skip Alston, Dianne Bellamy-Small and Yvonne Johnson are habitual late payers.
All of these folks on the list obviously feel a sense on entitlement. Although, I'm sure none would admit it. If 93% of the county pays on time and follows the rules, what else are we left to assume?
Katie Cashion's comment about it not being a "big deal" speaks for itself. Though I will say, at least her comment is honest and consistent with how she's paid her taxes over the years.
There are people in life who pay late on everything they owe. Then there are people who have just come into hard times financially who will eventually get themselves out of the hole. Then there are people, like the elected officials on this delinquent list, who find themselves in this same situation year after year. And yet, they still feel compelled to seek an office that determines where our tax money will be utilized. When questioned about why they pay late, they give deceiving answers, like "that kind of takes me by surprise", "I'll have to check that out...", "It's not a big deal as far as I'm concerned, as long as you get it paid pretty quickly" and "I don't know anything about that".
Is there any doubt that these folks will continue to not feel compelled to follow the rules?
I'm sure that Mr. Crayton is not going to say what he would normally say about a "regular taxpayer" being late because he reports to the county commissioners. As far as the reason for being late as "common", that is wrong.
Common reasons for delinquency are: loss of job, medical reasons, bankruptcy and divorce just to name a few.
The elected officials on this list have just one reason for their delinquency: they feel entitled NOT to have to follow the same rules as you and I because the people who enforce the rules REPORT to them!
It would be interesting for you to follow up at the end of this week to see how many on the list were prompted to pay up as a result of your story. I'd be willing to be not all.
Posted on January 17, 2005 10:16 AM
Jim: We will do a follow up, whether it's at the end of the week or in a couple weeks. If we follow last year's pattern, we'll use the dead tree (re: newspaper) version of Inside Scoop to follow up.
Thanks for your comments. --mark
Posted on January 17, 2005 11:56 AM