Midtown Taxpayers Should Get Correct Tax Bills, Official Promises Review

Last weekend, many Midtown residents were were miscalculated. 

"The program to calculate wasn't done properly," resident Sara Van Beck wrote in an email May 7. She said her tax estimate was off by more than $3,000.  

This weekend, Fulton County Commission Chairman John Eaves promised upset taxpayers that errors on tax notices would be corrected.

Speaking at a town hall meeting at Northside United Methodist Church sponsored by the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation, Eaves on Saturday said that he and the Fulton County Commission will meet next week with Chief County Tax Appraiser Burt Manning and the board of tax assessors to determine what went wrong with the incorrect notices and come up with a "fair course of action."

In response to continued questions, Eaves said that he would come up with answers and notify the Fulton Taxpayers Foundation and its president, John Sherman, about action that will be taken.

At first, Eaves said "hopefully the errors will be rectified." As the meeting went on, he grew more certain that he and the commission would force Manning and the Board of Assessors to take corrective action, although Eaves said the appraiser and the assessors are independent of the commission.

The commission, he said, "will be putting our foot down and forcing them to come up with a corrective course of action."

Last week, many city Atlanta taxpayers received incorrect notices showing that they would have to pay much higher property taxes although assessed property values sharply declined. The notices also showed an incorrect property tax exemption of $25,000 instead of $30,000 as approved by the Legislature.

Taxpayers in attendance asked about how they could determine their correct tax to make appeals. Eaves said that he understood that new, corrected notices would be sent out, but taxpayers worried whether they would receive them before the June deadline for making appeals.

Eaves said that a glitch in computer software caused the mistakes, which prompted questions about whether the software vendor would have to pay for the cost of sending out new notices. The chairman said that would be included in the discussions with the tax officials.

District 8 City Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean, in response to a question, said that she had been assured by the city's revenue chief that the proposed Atlanta budget is based on the correct assessments in the city tax digest, and "not the data you received in your mailbox."