Three counties issue electronic bills to taxpayers

Three Arkansas counties adopt e-billing

Shannon Chronister, data processing director for the Pulaski County Tax Collector’s office, demonstrates how taxpayers access the new e-billing Web site.

By Christy L. Smith AAC Communications Coordinator

Proponents tout systems’ convenience and cost savings

Taxpayers in three Arkansas counties — Pulaski, Saline and Sebastian — received electronic property tax bills for the first time this year. And Saline County resident Peggy Butler, 74, said she is pleased with the system her county has implemented.

“It’s more convenient, and it’s easier,” she said.

Butler doesn’t have to keep up with a paper bill. Her electronic bill remains in her email inbox, so she always knows where it is. Plus, by paying her bill online, she earns credit card rewards points and avoids standing in line at the collector’s office.

“From what I perceive to be the case with people 50 years old and younger, this would be the only thing they would want to do. But even with people my age, it couldn’t be any simpler,” she said. “It would seem to me that every county would want to do it.”

Arkansas counties gained the ability to issue electronic property tax bills following the passage of House Bill 1023 in the 2013 legislative session. Co-sponsored by state Rep. Andy Mayberry and Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, the measure amended ACA 26-35-705 requiring county sheriffs or collectors to mail property tax statements to residents no later than July 1 of each year. Those officials now can send electronic tax statements by July 1, as well. The goal, according to language in the bill, was to streamline the billing process and to reduce the costs associated with mailing tax statements.

Sebastian County Treasurer/Collector Judith Miller said she mails approximately 66,000 tax bills every year at a cost of 56 cents per bill. This year, 1,600 people in her county had opted to receive electronic bills only.

“When you send an email out, it costs us zero,” Miller said.

Pulaski County Chief Deputy Collector Bentley Hovis said it will be a couple of years before his county knows the true value of its costs savings but that the potential is great considering that it costs about $1 for the county to print and mail each tax bill.

In 2012, the Pulaski County Collector’s office mailed 278,939 tax bills at a total cost of $243,135. That amount includes $12,250 for processing approximately 25,000 pieces of returned mail and another $40,232 for printing and postage of delinquent tax bills.

“In some cases, people are receiving three pieces of mail,” said Hovis. “If we get 10 percent of taxpayers to opt in [for electronic billing], we would save about $30,000. That’s a sheriff’s deputy,” he said.

Pulaski County Treasurer/Collector Debra Buckner said a light bulb went off in her head a couple of summers ago when she received an email regarding online car tag renewal. If the Arkansas

“From what I perceive to be the case with people 50 years old and younger, this would be the only thing they would want to do.

But even with people my age, it couldn’t be

any simpler.”

— Peggy Butler,

Saline County taxpayer

Department of Finance and Administration could electronically notify motorists that their tags needed to be renewed, then perhaps the counties could electronically bill residents for the taxes due on their property.

“I came into the office the next day and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” Buckner said.

Many Arkansas county collectors use email notifications to let taxpayers know when their tax books are open, and residents of 45 counties can pay their taxes online. But only Pulaski, Saline and Sebastian counties have implemented a full e-billing system whereby taxpayers can opt to receive electronic rather than paper bills.

“It’s a hot topic right now, especially with the big counties,” said Corey Ramsay of TaxPRO. “The bigger the county, the more interested they are.”

Buckner said that when she considered the number of people who pay other bills online — and the growing use of smartphones and tablet computers — it made sense to implement an e-billing system.

“We are trying to be forward thinking and meet the needs of our customers,” she said.

Figures gathered by researchers indicate that more and more Americans are embracing technologies such as e-billing and e-shopping. In its 2011 Consumer Billing and Payment Trends study, Fiserv Inc. found that four out of five U.S. households with Internet access banked online.

“Consumers are increasingly turning to online and mobile channels for everything from opening accounts to sending and receiving money,” Fiserv reported. “As consumers’ lives become more digital, new services, such as mobile payments, as well as more established ones, such as e-bills, are poised for growth.”

Another firm, Deloitte, found that for the first time online shopping overtook physical shopping during the 2013 holiday season. Deloitte reported a strong link between the acceleration of online shopping and rising smartphone use.

Smartphones outsold personal computers for the first time in 2011 and tablet computers are expected to outsell personal computers by 2015, according to research group IDC.

Pew Research Center reports that as of January 2014, 90 percent of American adults have a cell phone. Fifty-eight percent have a smartphone; 32 percent own an e-reader; and 42 percent own a tablet computer. As of May 2013, 63 percent of adult cell owners use their phones to go online.

There has been a push by Connect Arkansas, a private, nonprofit corporation, to foster broadband Internet education, use and access across the state. Only 42 percent of Arkansans had access to high-speed Internet when Connect Arkansas was founded in 2007. By fall 2013, that percentage was up to 69.

There are several examples of government entities using electronic billing as a way to save money. Denmark, for example, made a move to an electronic procurement system in 2005, when it banned all paper invoicing of suppliers. Sweden has had an e-invoicing system in place since 2008, with Finland following suit in 2010. Mexico and the United Kingdom are moving toward similar systems.

Counties of various sizes around the United States have adopted electronic billing systems for taxpayers. San Bernardino County, California, with a population of more than 2 million, Loudoun County, Virginia, with a population of approximately 337,000, and Geauga County, Ohio, with a population of nearly 94,000 are just a few examples.

According to the Loudoun County Treasurer’s Web site, e-billing reduces the chances of a bill getting lost, which could cost the taxpayer extra money in penalties and interest. It also is a green initiative that saves tax dollars by reducing postage and handling costs.

Geauga County Deputy Treasurer Dorothy Thompson wrote in an email that her county instituted its e-billing program in 2010. She said about 2 ¼ percent of Geauga County taxpayers use the system, resulting in an annual savings of $1,200.

“Other than the savings to us, our taxpayers like the program because they get their bill emailed to them, and they receive their bill a little earlier than if it was mailed,” Thompson said.

The cost and effort to establish an electronic billing system vary according to the approach the individual county takes.

Pulaski County began its initiative by collecting taxpayer email addresses from the county assessor’s office. Its customer service employees built upon that database by asking taxpayers for their email addresses each time they had contact.

Pulaski County opted to build its own computer framework for the electronic billing system rather than contract with a third-party biller. Shannon Chronister, data processing director for the Pulaski County Collector’s office, said it was important that taxpayers feel their information was secure. “One of the best decisions we made was to create the profiles here on the Pulaski County Web site,” he said. “It set us back time wise, but we have control of the data.”

Pulaski County used the more than 66,000 email addresses it had gathered to send a survey asking whether those taxpayers would be willing to opt in to an electronic billing system. More than 56,000 taxpayers received the email, and a little more than 15 percent of them said they would opt in.

So after the electronic billing law was passed by the state legislature last year, the county was poised to issue its first electronic tax bills.

There were some initial issues. So many taxpayers responded when the February 2013 tax notifications went out that the computer system temporarily crashed; and some taxpayers’ Internet browsers were not compatible with the system. Buckner said those problems have been addressed. And taxpayers who want to pay by mail still have that option; those who don’t want to participate in e-billing aren’t required to do so.

“It is voluntary,” Buckner said. “We are adding to the options. We are never going to eliminate the paper billing.”

Sebastian County Treasurer/Collector Miller and Saline County Collector Joy Ballard said they also made early preparations to issue electronic tax bills this year.

Miller said that in 2012 her office mailed every taxpayer a postcard asking them if they wanted to opt in to electronic billing. Then the local newspaper ran an article, and her staff collected email addresses when they came into contact with taxpayers.

“The collector’s office in Sebastian County is thrilled with this,” she said. “We couldn’t wait to begin.”

Ballard was similarly excited about the prospect of electronic billing. She had to walk a few people through using the new system, and she received phone calls from four or five people whose software was so old that they couldn’t use the system.

“We are trying to be forward thinking and

meet the needs of our customers.”

— Debra Buckner,

Pulaski County Collector

See “BILLING” on Page 30 >>>

Billing

“You can’t tell them they need to go buy new software,” she said. “I sent them a paper statement, and we never got anymore complaints.”

Ballard said her office incurred no extra expense to implement its electronic billing system. When she took office in 2011, she instructed her staff to gather phone numbers and email addresses for every taxpayer they encountered. They had accumulated a large database of contacts by the time her office partnered with INA in 2012 to issue an email blast to taxpayers letting them know the tax books were open. They sent email reminders midway through the year.

“That’s all we could do at the time because the legislation hadn’t been passed yet,” Ballad said, referring to House Bill 1023.

Ballard said her county typically mails nearly 68,000 tax statements each year. At the request of taxpayers, 5,009 of those statements were sent via email this year, saving the county $11,220 in paper and postage costs.

“And it’s going to grow,” Ballard said of the savings. “Everyday someone signs up for e-statements. Not just one person, but several people. This is going to be a gift that keeps on giving.” Miller said she continues to get emails from taxpayers who want to opt in — and those emails aren’t coming from just the youngest of taxpayers. “You know, the really older generation does not even use computers. We know we are not going to connect with them,” she said. But she estimates that Sebastian County taxpayers well into their 60s are participating in the e-billing program. “If they are familiar with computers, they will accept it,” she said. Computers are the “way of the world” now, Buckner said. If a collector’s goal is to save taxpayer dollars, offer customers a more convenient way to pay, and increase collections, then electronic billing is the right move, she said.

“Are you part of the future, or are you part of the past?” she said.

Continued From Page 29 <<<

Clark County Assessor’s staff marks Black History Month

In February, the Clark County Assessor’s office recognized the contributions African Americans have made to American history. Members of the assessor’s office staff wore matching kente cloth scarves. They also created a Black History Month display for the courthouse hallway. Pictured from left to right are Assessor Kasey Summerville, Tosha Horton, Jamie Hammond, Carla McDuffie, Sandra Peterson and Sue Forthman.

Fordyce Chamber of Commerce honors Dallas County Sheriff

Photo by S. Weathers, Fordyce News-Advocate

Left: Dallas County Sheriff Donny Ford was honored with an award for service from the Fordyce Chamber of Commerce during its annual meeting and awards banquet on March 20. Junior Miss Dallas County Lauren Archer presented the award. About Dallas County Dallas County was formed January 1, 1845, from Bradley and Clark counties and named in honor of George M. Dallas, who had been elected Vice President of the United States in 1844. Dallas County is known for its rolling hills and pine forests. The world’s first southern pine plywood plant was built in Fordyce, and timber resources still drive its economy. Georgia-Pacific Corp. is the county’s largest employer. Tri-County Lake, where Dallas, Calhoun, and Cleveland counties meet, offers water recreation activities. The Ouachita River, the longest and largest river in the Ouachita Mountain region, forms the western county line.

Left: An architectural rendering depicts the completed project. Middle: Framing for the new addition goes up. Bottom left: Workers lay the footing. Bottom right: Scaffolding surrounds the nearly completed wing.

AAC expands headquarters, welcomes sheriff’s association

The Association of Arkansas Counties Board of Directors decided last spring to expand AAC facilities so the organization could continue to grow its programs and services for Arkansas counties. The expansion will soon take the form of a two-story, $1.75 million, 5,000-square-foot addition on the east side of the existing AAC building. It will house 16 offices and two conference rooms. It also will allow for minor redesign of the east wing of the existing AAC building enabling those spaces to be utilized more efficiently.

The board of directors also approved a lease agreement with the Arkansas Sheriff’s Association for a portion of the expansion. The ASA will move this summer into its new headquarters.

The board of directors has made the AAC a very strong enterprise, and their focus on providing more to the counties of Arkansas is evidenced in their leadership and commitment to the future.