Tax bills head out to homes

The bill will go out in the mail Monday for more than 48,000 homeowners in Columbia County.

That's when the county tax commissioner's office will send out 48,766 tax bills on property taxes. The office will collect $66,358,636, which must be paid no later than Nov. 15.

"This time, we are mailing them out even earlier than we did last year,'' said Kay Allen, the county's tax commissioner. "We are doing that because everything is ready and it will just give everybody an opportunity to look at it longer or if they want to break it up in payments until the deadline.''

Allen said mailing out the bills early also helps her office.

"We've had so many sales and things, we want to make sure the right party gets the bill, and this will give us an opportunity to reroute any return mail or answer any calls about people who sold their property and they shouldn't have received the bill,'' she said.

A year ago, the county gave a discount to those who paid early by credit card.

"The governing authwority is not going to do that this year,'' Allen said.

Taxes collected after the deadline will be assessed a 1 percent penalty per month. If the payment is delinquent 90 days after the due date, an extra 10 percent penalty also will be added.

All payments must be in the office by Nov. 15. Payments postmarked Nov. 15 but not in the office by that date will be considered late.

Taxes can be paid online by Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express at www.columbiacountyga.gov/taxcommissioner.

A drop box for payments also can be found in the parking lot to the left of Building A at the Evans Government Complex. The box will have orange flags around it.