Did you see the paper yesterday? If you did, you may have noticed page after page after page of names, address and amounts listed. Those are the folks who haven’t paid their Mecklenburg County taxes.
Embarrassing? Maybe. But, by law, that’s what the government is required to do — advertise who the community tax-slackers are in an effort to spur them to action (i.e. make a payment).
Mecklenburg County is owed more than $26.7 million in delinquent taxes for 2008, with many people citing the poor economy as the reason they weren’t able to pay their bills on time.
An advertisement appearing in Sunday’s Observer listed more than 28,800 overdue tax bills for land, buildings and business equipment in Mecklenburg, as well as personal property including boats or airplanes.
State law requires local governments to publish the ads as a way to notify individuals and businesses that they owe taxes.
This year’s ad has fewer names than the 32,000-plus bills worth a total of nearly $35 million listed in 2008, when the ad was printed one month earlier, in March. But it has more names than the 26,530 listed in 2007, the last time the county ran an ad in April.
The Charlotte Observer has constructed a database of delenquent tax payers. Search for your name here.
This article appears in Apr 21-28, 2009.
To bad it does not allow the person to have an explaination next to it. Times are tuff and it sucks to have honest people in bad times to have their names up in lights. For those that have a good reason of course.
Wow, in the newspaper? I do read the newspaper but I don’t like glancing at depressing stuff like that. I know my name wouldn’t be listed as a nonpayer of taxes, but it’s still depressing nonetheless to see pages and pages of names including their place of residence and how much they owe!