More than 183,000 property tax statements mailed Friday are missing the return address on first- and second-half payment stubs.
The address for Pierce County Budget and Finance was supposed to be printed on the payment stub so that it shows through the window on return envelopes.
The vendor that produced the property tax statements – a company call AFTS – left off the return address, said Assessor-Treasurer Mike Lonergan.
“It’s a big mistake,” said Lonergan, in his first year in office.
“We don’t know why they dropped it,” Lonergan said. “It was obviously a mistake on their part.”
At least a half-dozen people in the Assessor-Treasurer’s Office, including Lonergan himself, failed to catch the mistake.
Lonergan said his office found technical errors and made those corrections.
“I looked at it myself,” he said.
“The most obvious thing we didn’t check,” Lonergan said. “We should check everything.”
The return mailing address is: Pierce County Budget and Finance, PO Box 11621, Tacoma, WA 98411.
“There was no change to this address,” he said. “We just simply missed it.”
Taxpayers shouldn’t panic. There are some easy fixes.
Lonergan suggested writing the return address on the envelope above the blank window. Taxpayers also could address their own envelope.
Even it someone mails their payments without a return address in the provided envelopes, the county should receive them, Lonergan said.
That’s because a bar code containing the address is printed on the envelopes below the return address window. The first-half payment is due April 30; the second half is due Oct. 31.
Lonergan said his office will post something about the mistake on its website: co.pierce.wa.us/atr. Its received calls about the error. So has The News Tribune.
Lonergan said his office is evaluating whether it will notify taxpayers of the mistake in some other form, such as a postcard.
“We’re talking with AFTS about how they would correct the error,” Lonergan said.
Read more here: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/street/2013/02/19/return-address-left-off-pierce-county-tax-statements-taxpayers-can-add-the-address/
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