Late on your 2019 property taxes? Durham and Wake counties are giving thousands a break
People past due on their property taxes in Wake and Durham counties are getting a reprieve while businesses are closed and people are stuck at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus.
Both counties are suspending collection efforts until the pandemic begins to slow, their tax administrators said Tuesday. People with overdue tax bills will still owe the money and the interest that will accrue the longer those bills remain unpaid, they said.
“Our job in the tax office is not to issue punishments. It’s to be a partner with the community,” Durham County Tax Administrator Dwane Brinson said. “The reason people pay taxes is so that the county, the city, the jurisdiction can provide services, and that’s all that we want.”
Orange County is not suspending collections at this time, Orange County Tax Administrator Nancy Freeman said.
“It’s hard to look at somebody, knowing that they’re having trouble paying their taxes, but knowing that we need to get that money in here as well,” Freeman said.
Taxes on land and other real property are levied each year in July and due Sept. 1, although state law gives property owners until Jan. 5 to pay before charging interest.
Past-due bills are charged an initial rate of 2% in January, and 0.75% every month after that. Between March 1 and June 30, state law requires tax offices to publish taxpayers’ names and the amount they owe in the local newspaper.
Although an unpaid tax bill can lead to foreclosure, tax offices usually start with other tools, including garnishing wages, collecting from a bank account or state tax refund, or arranging a payment schedule.
If those methods don’t work, the tax office can seek foreclosure to pay the bill in District or Superior Court, depending on the amount owed. Freeman noted that a foreclosure process in Orange County can take six to eight months and usually starts only after the property owner has racked up unpaid taxes for multiple years.
Roughly 85% of past-due taxes are paid in full after the foreclosure process starts, she said.
Tax collectors can’t waive tax bills or interest on overdue taxes — that would take action by the General Assembly — but they do have some leeway when it comes to enforcing tax collection, local officials said.
While unpaid bills can trigger foreclosures, that process can take up to a year or more, they said.
Most property taxes paid
Wake County has collected about 99.3% of the taxes owed for last year, leaving about 8,000 bills — roughly $7 million — unpaid, Revenue Director Marcus Kinrade said. Although they are not enforcing collections at this time, he said, the office is reaching out to delinquent taxpayers by phone and by mail.
Orange County reported a similar collection rate last year, Freeman said. The county still has 1,944 unpaid bills, or a total of $3.2 million in past-due property taxes, she said.
In Durham County, there are other challenges after a March 6 cyber attack that left roughly 1,000 computers and 100 servers contaminated, Brinson said.
The city of Durham had a similar number of computers and servers damaged in that attack.
Property owners can still mail in their payments or pay online through a third-party vendor, Brinson said, but the tax office staff can’t look up anyone’s bill or enforce collections. The office also is closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, he said.
Durham County had collected just over 98% of last year’s tax payments by March 6, Brinson said. His report to the Durham County commissioners in February showed that $13.7 million in property taxes was overdue.
Durham County’s tax office will send property owners another notice about overdue taxes and the suspension of enforcement measures once the computers come back online, he said. If the coronavirus shutdown lasts more than 30 days, they may need other options, he said.
“We understand it’s been tough times. Not only has Durham County’s system been down, but the unemployment rate has skyrocketed, everything is closing down, people are out of jobs, we understand that. It’s affected us, too,” Brinson said.
The News & Observer reported Tuesday morning that 140,000 new unemployment claims had been filed since March 16.
Delayed coronavirus fallout?
Tax officials from all three counties emphasized that collecting taxes is important, because counties, towns and fire departments rely on that money to meet the need for social services, police and fire protection, emergency services, and education, among other services.
The real challenge could be later this summer, Kinrade said, when new property tax bills arrive in the mail. Property owners and small businesses still could be struggling to recover from extended closures and lost business, he said.
“When we issue new bills in July, ... we might have a lot of people unemployed who won’t be able to pay,” Kinrade said.
Some counties also might see a drop in property taxes paid on motor vehicles, in part because the economy could discourage people from buying a new car or truck with a higher value, he said. Or people might delay renewing their vehicle registration and the property tax bills that accompany registration notices.
However, he doesn’t expect the economic effects of the coronavirus to affect real property tax revenues unless the real estate market takes a big hit. Even then, it should only be a problem in counties planning a 2021 tax revaluation, he said.
That includes Orange County, which last completed a revaluation in 2017. Wake County won’t do another revaluation until 2024, and Durham County is scheduled to complete one in 2023.
Get tax help, pay a bill
Although tax offices in Wake, Durham and Orange counties are closed, tax officials encouraged residents to reach out and try to find a solution to their overdue taxes:
▪ Wake County: Call 919-856-5400; send an email to taxhelp@wakegov.com; or contact the Wake County Department of Tax Adminstration via mail at P.O. Box 2331, Raleigh, NC 27602. Options for paying your taxes are available at tinyurl.com/wngqx2r.
▪ Durham County: Call 919-560-0300; send an email to Tax_assessor@dconc.gov; or contact Durham County Tax Administration via mail at 201 E. Main St., 3rd Floor, Administration Building II, Durham, NC 27701. Options for paying your taxes are available at tinyurl.com/vfnrhev.
▪ Orange County: Call 919-245-2100, send an email to tax@orangecountync.gov, or contact Orange County Tax Administration via mail at 228 S. Churton St., Suite 200, Hillsborough, NC, 27278-8181. Options for paying your taxes are available at tinyurl.com/t8qoeyo.
Staff writer Will Doran contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 25, 2020 at 10:41 AM.
