Porter County taxpayers can expect their 2009 property tax bills in the mail, some as early as Thursday this week.

County Auditor Jim Kopp announced last week the office will be printing the remaining bills over the next few days. He said he expects all the bills to be mailed by Friday, Nov. 13, which was the date the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance planned with county officials in October. The original date for the bills to be sent this year was May 11.

Porter County Treasurer James R. Murphy slotted Dec. 4 as the due date for tax payments. Murphy said he and the Porter County Council had not officially set up payment plans for those who cannot make full payments by the Dec. 4 deadline. Murphy encourages any taxpayer having trouble making the payment to call the Porter County Treasurer’s office to avoid late fees.

Taxpayers can mail in their checks to the treasurer’s office or pay by credit card on the county’s Web page. The payments will be processed through a recent agreement with First Source Bank that will make the funds available faster for taxing units. Murphy hopes to have all tax payments processed by the end of this year.

Porter County is one of five counties still waiting for its 2009 tax bills to be processed. The other remaining counties are LaPorte, Brown, Clinton and White.

Kopp said his office is prepared to get the tax bills out on schedule next year, or at least close to it. He said the delays this year are due in part to data conversion problems caused by synchronizing several computer systems. Kopp predicted the magnitude of error for next year will be less than 1 percent of what it was this year. The auditor’s office found nearly 7,000 discrepancies in the 2008 data, he said.

Kopp commended his staff for putting in hours of effort to fix the errors. He suspects they haven’t found all of them but said he is confident in the work. The auditor’s office was still working over the weekend making corrections.

“You try to minimize the problem. Basically that’s all you can do,” said Kopp.

The assessor’s office has completed their 2010 tax roll and it is ready to be checked by the auditor’s office well ahead of last year. Kopp said the process is expected to go much more quickly. His office has established deadlines with firm intentions to meet those dates.

The Indiana DLGF is working with the entire state to get the 2010 tax bills out on time and already states they are four months ahead of last year’s taxing cycle on average. The DLGF is calling 2010, “The Year of No Excuses.” The first installment of the 2010 tax bills is due May 10.

Posted 11/9/2009