Property Delinquent Tax: What makes Cuyahoga County No. 1 in Tax Overdue?

You might have heard of the term delinquent tax. This is the tax that goes unpaid after the due date. You’re usually penalized for delinquent tax. It’s the state tax commission’s responsibility to collect such taxes. Shockingly, Cuyahoga County has about the fourth of delinquent property tax bills in Ohio. This means that there is more money past due than in any other county of the state.

So why should you be concerned about any of this?

Here’s the thing: when your neighbors or neighborhood businesses don’t pay the taxes, you end up paying a lot more. The bills don’t just go away. It can be meeting payroll or paying off loans for a new school building or city hall; the tax has to be paid one way or the other.

Cuyahoga County is the second most populated county, which is 11% of the state’s population. But it has a huge share of delinquencies.

There’s a total of $356.9 million, which makes it 26.2% of the statewide total. This amount is the crux of unpaid bills from last year and the previous years. Even property owners are behind on their bills by a total of $130 million. And these are just the assessments for things like sewer works and street lightings.

Overdue Delinquents

The largest tax delinquency is from the University Square shopping center in University Heights. Their overdue amount is a total of $40 million. Other than that, other overdue amounts are usually from non-profits that have a dispute over their properties, whether they should be treated as taxable or not.

Large delinquencies at one corner, but small delinquencies also add up to a lot of money. 85% of such delinquencies amount to less than $10,000.

Because of such irresponsibility, communities get affected; especially schools, who’re the biggest recipient of property tax dollars. Taxpaying pulls a community together, that is if every member of the community realizes its true impact.    

School Budgets: What Happens?

According to records from Cuyahoga County, Cleveland schools have an outstanding tax that is now more than one-third of what it was billed last year, i.e., $106 million of $294.2 million.

If we look at the bills from last year, around $32.7 million went uncollected. This means that in one year, Cleveland schools only took 88.4% of the billed amount. The overdue amount has just built up over the years.

Homeowner Delinquent Tax

Every year, homeowners get two tax bills. In Cuyahoga County, these are billed in January and July every year. January’s overdue mean an immediate interest charge. If you fail to pay the bill in full in July, the property ends up as delinquent. That means more charges are added!

Delinquent property owners are informed via mail, and later the names are published in the newspapers. Once again, homeowners are informed about being late when the following year’s bill is dispatched in December. If you fail to pay the amount once again, you get another notice.

This program wants to help taxpayers pay their overdue taxes before they lead to foreclosure. Also, to improve collections for local governments. Sometimes, you can even get payment plans arranged.

What’s changed?

Over a few years ago, total delinquent taxes and assessments went down in Cuyahoga County and the state. But, the drop in state delinquency was a result of a drop in Cuyahoga County delinquencies.

According to the Ohio Department of Taxation, 2014 was at the peak, with $667 million listed as delinquent in Cuyahoga County. $1.97 billion was the delinquency amount statewide.

But last year, Cuyahoga delinquencies fell by 28% to $487 million in both taxes and assessments. Statewide, the overdue amount fell to 11% to $1.76 billion. If Cuyahoga County was out of the picture,  the state would be at just 3%.

That is one great contribution of delinquencies from Cuyahoga County. Let’s just hope that the property owners & taxpayers of Cuyahoga County pay their bills and bring that percentage lower still.