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Milwaukee City Treasurer Spencer Coggs warns taxpayers that in order to avoid tax delinquency, they must make sure they pay the correct installment amount due each month.
The City of Milwaukee offers a ten month, interest-free, property tax installment payment plan. Over twenty-four thousand City taxpayers are taking advantage of the plan. When paying property taxes through the installment payment plan, the exact monthly amount due is listed on each of the monthly installment tax bills.
The problem is that many taxpayers are using their bank’s on-line payment system to make their monthly installment tax payment. Unfortunately, nearly four hundred taxpayers are using the first installment amount due in January as their sole monthly installment payment amount for all payments, which falls short of the actual amounts that are due February through July. An insert was included with the annual December combined property tax bills that warned that the first installment due in January is usually less than the amounts due from February through July. “Hundreds of well-meaning Milwaukee taxpayers are mistakenly making payments that fall short of the amount due, and are heading down the path of tax delinquency,” stated Treasurer Coggs.
The first time that an installment payment is either paid short or missed, the tax account can be reinstated to current status on the installment plan by paying 1% interest on the missed installment, or the amount that was paid short, along with the next month’s installment payment due. However, if an installment is paid short or missed for the second time, regardless of the dollar amount, the tax account will go tax delinquent and interest and penalty will be assessed retroactively back to the first of February, in accordance with Wisconsin State Statutes and Milwaukee Ordinances. The City Treasurer’s Office stated that if taxpayers used the January installment amount to incorrectly pay the February installment, that would constitute a first time shortfall. Paying short on the next installment in March would be the second shortfall and will result in the account going permanently tax delinquent regardless of the amount of the shortfall.
Treasurer Coggs wants taxpayers to make sure that they are requesting the correct amount be paid from their bank account for the monthly installment due, in order to prevent their account from going tax delinquent. Also, he wants to make sure that taxpayers’ bank account tax payments are sent directly to the City Treasurer’s Office at P.O. Box 514062, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53203-3462, and not to the City’s property tax payment lock box, which cannot process payments sent in without a tax bill payment coupon.
Treasurer Coggs urges taxpayers to seriously consider using the City Treasurer Office’s Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Installment Payment Plan. “The EFT payment plan assures accurate and timely monthly installment tax payments will always be made, preventing permanent tax delinquency,” said Coggs.
Information and an application to the City Treasurer’s Office EFT installment payment plan is available at https://city.milwaukee.gov/treasurer/eft.
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