When Gwinnett County homeowners get their property tax bills in the mail each year, the same bill also includes charges for services such as garbage collection.
One state lawmaker is trying to end that practice.
Rep. Brett Harrell’s House Bill 291 would prevent jurisdictions from including the additional service fees or assessments on property tax bills, limiting charges to just those associated with the annual home taxes.
Keeping the bills separate allows for more government transparency and, in some cases, could keep property owners from losing their homes for charges such as unpaid trash fees, said Harrell, a Republican and former mayor of Snellville.
“On my own property tax bills, in some cases we’ve had declining property values and the bill continued to increase because of these fees,” he said. “Fees on my rental property in Gwinnett County made up 22 percent of my tax bill.”
Gwinnett's tax bills include 12 months of trash, stormwater, streetlight and speed hump fees. Scheduling changes last year led to 18 months of trash fees on the tax bills. DeKalb County includes the same fees along with parking maintenance on tax bills.
If Gwinnet had to charge the fees separately, there would be costs to reprogram the billing system to generate different fee statements for residents who receive different services, said Joe Sorenson, the county’s spokesman.
For example, within Gwinnett, the city of Snellville paid the county about $40,000 last year to bill for stormwater fees on the tax bills for 7,900 of its homeowners. Including the fee this way was more economical, City Manager Russell Treadway said.
“[The existing system] is the least expensive way to do it,” Sorenson said. “People have to remember that it is their money we are trying to save.”
Both the Association County Commissioners of Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association oppose the legislation because the dual billing creates savings and produces a higher compliance rate of those fees being paid, GMA spokeswoman Amy Henderson said. An ACCG survey found that at least 40 counties included some fee or assessment on property tax bills.
“If the cost is so great that the service is now unprofitable simply because of billing, it’s probably not a good service,” Harrell said.
He admits the legislation could lead to higher administrative costs for cities and counties, and that there is more of a chance homeowners would not pay the separate service charges. But the benefits outweigh the costs, he said.
Harrell’s bill would allow counties to include a separate bill for the fees in the same envelope as the property tax bill to help cut costs, as well as include the fees on other bills. The legislation would not affect counties such as Cherokee, Cobb and Fulton that include only property tax charges on the bills, county tax commissioners said.
James Bell, president of the Georgia Taxpayers Alliance, supports the bill for its property protection benefits.
“I don’t think the government should be allowed to put liens against your home for collection of garbage,” he said. "There have got to be other ways of collection."
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