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Tax bill math error to cost county $50,000
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It will cost Allegheny County $50,000 to reprint 350,000 tax bills after missing a math error.
All in all, it costs as much as $200,000 to print and mail county tax bills.
After the bills were printed, county lawyers realized they forgot to adjust to the $15,000 homestead exemption, which the law says must be raised in reassessment years. In order to give qualifying residents the same $85 tax discount as before, the exemption would need to be $18,000, solicitor Andrew Szefi said.
County council agreed, raising the exemption Tuesday night.
Actually, they're still a bit off: Administrators rounded the exemption down to $18,000 to make calculations easier, Szefi said. Conveniently, this will net county government an extra $60,000 or so in revenue -- which will go towards reprinting the bills.
First Published February 9, 2013 12:00 am
