Area towns reporting higher-than-usual tax collections

The COVID-19 pandemic left some people facing financial hardship, but it did not stop area residents from paying taxes.

Although the percentage of local taxes collected each year in Danbury area towns is normally high, some local tax collectors said 2020-21 saw higher than usual or anticipated collection rates.

Bethel

Tax collector Ann Scacco said Bethel’s 99.68 percent tax collection rate this past fiscal year was the highest she’s seen in her more than 20 years working in the town’s tax office — and she believes the pandemic had something to do with it.

“People didn’t go anywhere, so they had money to pay their taxes,” Scacco said. “The second thing was because we were closed, my staff had the ability to work over the phone with the taxpayers and it contributed to us getting to ones that we don’t normally get to.”

With town hall closed due to the pandemic, Scacco said her staff were able to focus more on helping local property owners figure out ways to pay their taxes.

“Without having customers come in, we had the ability to work with the homeowners oneon-one to help them schedule payment plans and stuff like that,” she said.

Although the 99.68 percent collection rate only reflects a 0.51 percent year-over-year increase, Scacco said it was “significantly higher” for Bethel considering all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.

“We’ve always been 99-pointsomething, but 99.68 was very surprising,” she said. “It was unexpected with COVID.”

Brookfield

With a 99.92 percent tax collection rate, 2020-21 was one of the “higher years,” Brookfield’s tax collector, Roberta Sinatra, said.

Sinatra noted a few factors that may have contributed to the town’s 1.07 percent year-over-year collection rate increase.

“You had a lot of people refinancing because the mortgage rates were low, and then you had a lot of sales going through and when you sell a home, the taxes have to be current,” she said. “You also had people getting stimulus money, so that may have helped.”

New Fairfield and Sherman

With a 0.1 percent year-overyear increase, New Fairfield’s tax collector Kerrie Hess Greening said the town’s 2020-21 tax collection rate was neither surprising nor unexpected.

This past fiscal year, 99.4 percent of local taxes were collected in New Fairfield compared to 99.3 percent in 2019-20.

“It went up just a tad,” said Greening, noting that tax collection in New Fairfield has always been high.

Like its neighbor to the south, the town of Sherman also didn’t see a notable change in its tax collection rate.

“I compare the years as we are collecting, and the numbers were matching up to the prior year,” said Sherman’s tax collector, Tabitha Fazzone.

The town’s 2020-21 collection rate of 99.52 percent reflects a less-than-half-percent year-overyear increase.