Sunday, May 17, 2009
Here comes the tax ma'am
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
Many years ago, in a city far away, during a recession of a different making, a mayor and council were having a difficult time writing a budget in which revenue would match expenses. It was an election year. They weren't going to raise taxes. They weren't going to cut services.
So they hit upon an idea to their liking: They'd blame the elected tax collector for a lack of revenue. He wasn't collecting enough of taxes owed. Instead of figuring on say a 90 percent collection rate, they'd bump it up to 95 percent. Poof! Budget balanced!
I asked the tax collector to assess the wisdom of that pencil stroke. He tipped back his squeaky chair, lit up a cigarette, took a long, hard drag, then looked at me even longer and harder: "Honey, let me tell you something and see if you can understand it because those (expletives) in the next room don't. I'm not going to collect a dime more than you're going to pay. I can't make you pay your taxes. I can send you a bill. I can send you another. I can hound you. I can file a lien against you. I can even years from now take your property from you and sell it at a tax sale. Oh, the city will eventually get its money. But I can't make you pay."
I thought about this when Roanoke Treasurer Evelyn Powers pitched a new way to make people pay their delinquent car tax. The vast majority of people pay their taxes and on time. But some just won't. Call them tax cheats or tax scofflaws. Same difference. They cost us all.
In Roanoke, about $200,000 a year in car taxes goes unpaid. That's enough to run the swimming pools or keep three or four more teachers on staff.
Powers and Finance Director Ann Shaver explained to the city council that for about $25,000 in startup costs (the purchase of camera and computer equipment) and $13,500 in part-time wages, Roanoke could aggressively hunt the tax avoiders.
A temp (perhaps a retired law enforcement officer) would scour neighborhoods, apartment complexes and shopping centers with a camera mounted on the car. The camera would scan license plates, feeding the information into a computer that would register a hit on plates whose owners owe back taxes.
The temp would call into city hall to figure out what to do next. If the car's owner is slightly behind and catching up on a payment plan, the temp moves on. But if the owner has ignored notices, defied collections and is more than a few months late -- bingo! The car will be tagged with a notice, warning the owner it would be in his best interest to scoot down to the municipal building and pay up. Or else. The "or else" being the next time the license plates will be removed.
Council was nodding along, liking the idea of going after tax dodgers, until that last part about essentially immobilizing someone's car by taking the license plate that makes it legal to drive. What if it's raining and a mom with crying, clinging children pushes her cart out of Wal-Mart and finds her plate missing, asked Councilwoman Gwen Mason.
What if they're too poor to pay and now the city's keeping them from driving to work and they lose their job, asked Councilman Court Rosen.
"If they came down and told us that, we'd work with them," Powers said. And that's the problem. Already the city mails numerous notices; it reports people to the DMV; seeks to attach bank accounts, wages and lottery winnings; and works with people to set up modest payment plans.
Still, about 4 percent won't pay. This is an effort to make them. Besides, removing a license plate is less intrusive than police applying the boot to drivers who rack up parking tickets.
Will people pay? Powers seems to think so. Sometimes just letting people know the city's on the hunt is enough to bring them in voluntarily. The council OK'd tracking and warning and after a six-month trial will consider pulling plates.
Deploying technology to quickly scan and pull up information on people does give rise to the creep factor.
Mason, particularly, seemed troubled by the all-seeing, all-knowing technology.
"I'll write The Roanoke Times' headline," she said. "Big Brother comes to Big Lick."
"Can you call us Big Sisters?" Powers quipped.
If city officials were attaching tracking systems to cars so they easily could nab them again or, worse, disable them electronically, I'd join the creep parade.
But as Councilman Sherman Lea said, "The citizens expect us to collect delinquent taxes."
At the end of December, the cumulative total for delinquent car taxes surpassed $900,000.
Maybe you can't make them pay. But with that much at stake, you have to try.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
