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Title: Montgomery Extends Car Tax Return Deadline

Source: Roanoke Times & World News Publication date: 2000-04-28

Computer glitches have put Montgomery County two months behind schedule in processing personal property tax returns for the coming year, which means county taxpayers will have extra time to complete their returns. The county normally sends out returns in February asking taxpayers to list information about their motor vehicles for tax purposes and businesses to list their taxable inventory and machinery and tools.

This year, because of glitches and delays related to the installation of a new, Y2K-compliant county computer system, county taxpayers are just receiving their returns to fill out.

The Board of Supervisors has granted a one-month grace period for taxpayers to fill out and return those notices to the county. Though the notices contain a due date of May 1, the county will accept the returns until June 1 without penalty.

The delay is the latest in a series of glitches experienced because the county is a test site for a new municipal computer tax collection and management program by MUNIS Inc., county officials said Thursday.

"Each time we have a new deadline to do something, we go through the real live test," said Robert Parker, county spokesman. "As we are doing that, we are continuing to identify things that need to be fine- tuned and are working on those. It's such a sophisticated system, there's a lot of that to be done."

Commissioner of the Revenue Nancy Miller said the program was not ready in time to allow her office to print out the returns.

She said her employees will have to work overtime in May and June to enter the information into the computer, send that information off to obtain assessed values for vehicles and compute the annual tax bills that will be due in December.

So far she has been able to pay her staff overtime without having to ask the county for additional money.

"I'm not sure it's fixed," Miller said, "but they [the returns] are out. Hopefully there are not going to be any more bugs."

Meanwhile, the county treasurer who collects taxes is still contending with bugs and delays in the computer system that slowed down work last fall.

Treasurer Ellis Meredith said his employees are working to enter in a backlog of data that they compiled while waiting for MUNIS to work out glitches and develop software patches. He said the office still has not entered in data from February, March and April.

Meredith said the county is losing money because of the delays, but he can't calculate how much until the computer software is fixed. He said he has been unable to send information to Richmond so that the county can be compensated for lost revenue from car tax refunds. Meredith said his office is also waiting for MUNIS to install a program for dog licenses.

The Board of Supervisors has the authority to grant an extension of the state deadline for filing personal property tax returns. The extension lasts until June 1. However, if a taxpayer does not file the return by June 1, the penalty and interest assessed will be retroactive to May 1.

) 2000, YellowBrix, Inc. http://realcities.yellowbrix.com/pages/realcities/Story.nsp?story_id=10240367&site=charlotte&ID=realcities&scategory=Computers%3AY2K

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