Vance County residents have until Jan. 6, 2025 to pay their property tax bills before getting hit with a 2 percent interest penalty. That may add insult to injury this year, when many taxpayers are facing higher bills as a result of last year’s revaluation.
Vance County is among a handful of counties across the state that waits eight years – the state’s mandatory maximum interval to conduct revaluation – and some county leaders have said it needs to be done more often to reduce the sting and surprise of pricey tax bills.
The county published a list of questions and answers following the public comment portion of the Sept. 3 county commissioners meeting. Tax bills were sent out on Aug. 22, according to information on the county tax department webpage.
Much of the information had been discussed already, either during meetings of the board of commissioners or budget work sessions – the merits of sticking with a revenue-neutral budget versus the need for capital improvement projects that include a new fire station, 911 call center and jail, just to name a few.
One issue that county officials said they will explore is splitting the tax bill to show the breakdown between city tax and county tax for those city residents who must pay both. This hasn’t been done in more than a decade, and a change could come as soon as the 2025 tax bills.
County commissioners adopted the 2024-25 budget on June 24, which included a 10-cent tax increase per $100 valuation. The basic breakdown of that 10-cent increase is $.01 for salary increases to help attract and retain county employees and $.09 for those future capital projects.
As the county faces more opportunities for growth, be they commercial, industrial or residential, there also is a demand for adequate infrastructure to support that growth.
The question that municipalities and counties face is how to balance that growth – providing more services for residents, creating a better and bigger tax base that ultimately may reduce an undue burden on homeowners.
Property owners could appeal their tax bills, as long as they met a few conditions; there was an online mechanism to appeal property tax bills as part of the revaluation process. But 157 property owners in Vance County who completed an online submission got news that their data had been inexplicably lost during a routine computer program update.
To make matters worse, “the normal backup procedures failed to restore the data. The company is working “to better the situation and recollect the lost data,” the FAQ statement read.
Visit https://www.vancecounty.org/departments/tax-overview/ to learn more.
Click Play!