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Nutter on tax deadbeats: 'We're going to chase their little asses down' - with data
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Nutter on tax deadbeats: 'We're going to chase their little asses down' — with data
Mayor Nutter today announced a $40 million plan he expects will bring in $260 million more in taxes by 2018, by combining a more aggressive collections strategy with more outreach and a new "data warehouse," a set of analytical tools that will be used to identify should-be taxpayers and track what types of collection efforts work most effectively.
Philly currently has a 91 percent collection rate when it comes to property taxes, but was owed $518 million in delinquent real estate taxes by the end of the 2012 fiscal year. Nutter described a "new aggressive multifaceted delinquent tax collection strategy" to include a new tax software system and a call center with 55 new employees, which together will cost $40 million and take a few years to put in place. He said the last time the city Revenue Department received a major software upgrade was in 1993. The new software would integrate data from other agencies, identifying individuals who pay other taxes, such as federal taxes, but don't pay what they owe to the city.
"We want to be much higher up on your list of priorities," he said.
Nutter said accounts would be turned over to collections agencies earlier on, and that he wanted to increase sheriff's sales, considered to be a critical "stick" with which to motivate would-be deadbeats. How implementing more sheriff's sales might be accomplished or what's prevented it this far he wouldn't say. The goal is 600 sheriff's sales per month. As of last April the average was number of tax sales was around 150 per month.
Nutter denied the announcement was timed to efforts to iron out wrinkles with the Actual Value Initiative, the city's overhaul of its property tax assessments, but collection of delinquent taxes has been a central part of that discussion, given that higher collection rates would enable lower overall millage rates. Councilman Mark Squilla says any AVI plan "definitely needs to include collection of back debt and taxes not being paid ... in order for it to work. ... We need to have a number that will be included in our budget, of tax collection that is necessary for AVI to move forward."
Kevin Gillen of Penn's Fels Institute of Government is studying delinquency in the city. He says more emphasis ought to be put on sheriff's sales, which are still relatively infrequent in Philly compared to cities of comparable size. He says that one problem in the past is that property tax collection just "hasn't been a high priority for the city. With AVI coming through and the value of the city's property tax base growing so much over the past 10 years, property tax is going to move to the forefront as a salient source of revenue."
Or, as Nutter put it, for those "trifling and raggedy people" who don't pay, at long last, "we're going to chase their little asses down."
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