Property tax checks still being cashed as deadline nears

Checks mailed in to pay property taxes are being processed as they come in, according to the Hays County Tax Assessor.

Many submitted payments have not been cashed leaving some in the public concerned with the delinquent date of Feb.1, which is fast approaching. Marian Oles, a local business owner, said she sent in two personal property tax payment checks and three business property tax payment checks on Dec. 29. She said the majority of them were cashed by the county on Jan. 29, but two checks still have not been cashed. She knows she is not alone in experiencing the issue.

“The biggest thing that was concerning me … is basically that I didn’t want a late payment fee,” Oles said, adding that she isn’t certain if they have received the checks or if they were lost in the mail. “The only way you know if they have it is if they cashed it.”

Hays County Tax-Assessor Collector Jenifer O’Kane said the checks will be cashed in the order they were received by postmark date.

“This is normal practice every tax year,” O’Kane said. “Per the Texas Property Tax Code, we use the date of postmark as the date received, regardless of when we post the payment in the system and cash the check. No one will be penalized that has a postmark date of 1/31 or prior.”

Those that have called to inquire about when the checks will be cashed have had no success contacting the tax office via phone. O’Kane said the Hays County Tax Office is having “extreme issues” with the phone system.

“Our IT department has and continues to work on this. Right now, the phones in [the tax assessor office in] San Marcos are completely down, for example,” O’Kane said. “If people are calling or emailing to make sure we received their payment, there just isn’t a way we will be able to verify that. We don’t have the manpower to stop serving customers in line and go to our mailroom to check for individual payments. This slows the entire process down and causes more inquiries because of the time we took to search for someone’s individual payment.”

For more information go to hayscountytx.com/ departments/taxoffice.