City Council to vote on extension of property tax payment deadline

If you haven’t paid your property taxes to the city of Pittsburgh yet, have no fear — elected officials are poised to extend the deadline that property owners can pay the taxes and receive a 2% discount.

Legislation to extend the discount deadline from Feb. 12 until Feb. 20 came before City Council last week, following a delay in tax bills being mailed to residents. A final vote on the extension is scheduled for Tuesday.

Residents also may have noticed that their bill said Feb. 10 was the deadline to pay and receive the 2% discount. That was a misprint by the vendor that the city uses to mail out the bills.

“[There has been] lots of confusion,” finance Director Jennifer Gula told City Council members last week. “We’re just giving people extra time to make sure that their payments are received.”

On average, the city receives about $150 million in property taxes, Ms. Gula said.

The department of finance had originally asked council to extend the due date to Feb. 16 but, because of the way the city’s legislative process works, that extension wouldn’t have received full approval until Feb. 13 — giving residents only three additional days.

Council members and Ms. Gula agreed Feb. 20 was a good middle ground and was close to hitting the three-week mark after bills are mailed out. That is typically how long the city gives residents to pay their tax bills and receive the discount.

Property values have to be approved at the county level before the city can mail out its bills. This year, those values weren’t approved until Jan. 18, Ms. Gula said. In years past, once they were approved the vendor would immediately send out the bills.

This year, there was a scheduled mailing date of Jan. 31.

“So they sat there for a whole week before they were even delivered to the post office for distribution,” Ms. Gula said.

The city will not be using Jordan Tax Service to collect the property taxes. Instead, residents will pay the city directly and the city handle all payments in-house.

Jordan Tax Service will still collect the earned income tax for city residents, which is legislated by the state.

Bringing the property tax work in-house could ultimately save taxpayers money, Ms. Gula said. If a resident is behind on tax payments, Jordan Tax Service would have charged a delinquent fee and passed just the taxes along to the city.

“We will only charge penalty and interest once we file a lien,” Ms. Gula said.

“We are thankful that City Council moved swiftly to help ensure that our residents had adequate time to take advantage of discounted property tax rates,” Mayor Ed Gainey said in a statement last week. “I appreciate the hard work of our Finance Department Real Estate Division for working to draft legislation in order to best serve our residents.”

Anyone with questions about the city property tax bill can call the Real Estate Division at 412-255-2525 or visit the city’s website.