Published: July 03, 2009 08:49 am      

Last minute decision stalls tags

PICAYUNE — Taxpayers who have car tags coming due this month will have to wait an additional week before renewing them.

A recent decision by the state legislature to maintain cost reduction of tags has the Jackson tax offices working hard to make the necessary adjustments to their system. Pearl River County Tax Assessor Gary Beech said that process will take a week to complete and until that time his office will not be able to collect taxes on car tags that are due in July. Beech expects the process to be complete by July 8. Until that time county residents with car tag taxes due in July will have to wait to renew their car tags.

Car tags that were due prior to July can be renewed at any time, with a late fee if the tag is two weeks overdue from the expiration date, Beech said. A late fee will not be assessed on July’s car tags as long as those taxes are paid this month or the grace period.

Beech said the grace period lasts two weeks. Late fees for July tags will begin to be charged on Aug. 15. Expired tags can still earn taxpayers a ticket from law enforcement even during the grace period. For new car purchases taxpayers have seven working days to purchase a tag.

Jackson offices are making the adjustments because Wednesday the state legislature made a decision to inject some general budget funds in to the fund that subsidizes car tags. Picayune state Rep. Mark Formby said that fund was established to be self funded and help taxpayers by lowering the price of car tags. That car tag fund helps to reduce the price of car tags by collecting part of the sales tax from new car sales. Those sales have slumped in recent months under current economic conditions and so has the fund. Formby said the legislature made a decision to put about $30 million to $40 million into that fund to help taxpayers since car sales were not funding it. Formby used an estimate because he did not have the exact figure in front of him.

That amount of money will help but will not be the same amount of funds that helped keep the price of car tags low last year. Beech said last year there was enough to help fund the equivalent of about 55 mills worth of taxes. This recent decision by the legislature has provided enough money to cover about 42 mills. Ultimately, that will mean taxpayers will see about a 6.25 percent increase in the price of their car tags when they pay their bills this year. However, without those funds Beech estimates the price of car tags would have doubled.