Beaufort County Treasurer: Auditor miscalculated thousands of vehicle taxes

Thousands of Beaufort County residents may be paying too much — or too little — in car taxes, according to Beaufort County Treasurer Maria Walls.

Spurred by complaints from residents, the treasurer’s office conducted a months-long review of individual motor vehicle tax accounts and concluded that Beaufort County Auditor Jim Beckert’s office — which prepares the personal property tax rolls — “has failed to assign to the correct (tax amount) to thousands of vehicles,” Walls said earlier this week.

“Thousands are being overbilled; thousands are being underbilled,” she said.

Walls’ review — which examined tax information from a 12-month period between 2015 and 2016 — revealed more than 11,000 errors on individual vehicle accounts.

The value of those vehicles totals nearly $120 million, according to Walls’ data.

Walls’ review, which she presented to Beaufort County Council earlier this week, shows that about 6,600 vehicle owners underpaid taxes to the tune of nearly $90,000. Roughly 4,600 others overpaid by a total of $50,000.

Beckert said Thursday he could not verify the accuracy of Walls’ review because he has not examined the data.

And while he could not comment on the extent of the problem, he did say, “The issue does exist; it has existed for years.”

Walls said much of the problem stems from a disconnect in the county’s taxation software between where a vehicle is registered and where its owner actually lives.

For example, owners who live in unincorporated parts of the county may be hit with incorrect municipal taxes if their account indicates the car is registered to an address on Hilton Head Island.

Conversely, residents of Bluffton may be undertaxed if their vehicles are incorrectly entered as being registered in the unincorporated county.

“All you need to know (to avoid these errors is) that Beaufort is not in Bluffton … and Hilton Head is not in Port Royal,” Walls said. “This is not technical information; all you need is a map.”

She said she isn’t sure how the errors made their way into the county’s software system, because her review focused on analyzing existing data and not on the process of how it was entered.

Beckert said he was made aware of the problem earlier this year, and his office determined that the software used to maintain the tax information “had a computer glitch.”

The glitch caused vehicle and owner information sent from the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles to import incorrectly, he said.

The software vendor provided a patch — an update used to improve a program or fix a glitch — but the patch hasn’t been installed yet, Beckert said.

Installation is “being blocked by the treasurer,” he said. “The root problem could be resolved when (Walls) approves (of installing) the patch.”

Walls denied those claims.

“I am not holding up any import of any patch,” she said.

Walls and Beckert have been at odds for months over the autonomy of their respective offices and what role each should play in setting deadlines, printing and mailing tax bills, and collecting revenue.

Beckert has argued that Walls’ office should not have access to electronic tax information until he has completed the tax roll and handed it over to her office for collection.

“The system of checks and balances between the auditor and treasurer are based in state law,” he said, “and there is a clear separation of powers between the two offices.”

Beckert expressed concerns that, if other county offices have access to the data, “the (tax roll) data file could be changed” or fraudulently manipulated.

Walls said that, until the auditor’s office has completed its work, her staff is able to view data, not make any changes.

The idea that blocking the treasurer’s office from viewing tax data “as some form of checks and balances is just unreasonable,” Walls said.

Beckert took issue with Walls presenting the findings of her review to the County Council without discussing it with him first, calling the move “dirty pool.”

“It is my belief that she is trying to create controversy … just to embarrass the auditor’s office,” he said.

Walls said she is working this week to calculate the financial impact of the motor vehicle tax errors on the county’s municipalities and will share that information with town and city leaders.

While she doesn’t think the errors will cause major budgetary issues in the near-term, the problem will snowball if not fixed, she said.

There has been no determination about whether residents who were overbilled will get a refund or whether residents who were underbilled will have to pay the difference.

In the meantime, Walls has called on county administration leaders, with the blessing of County Council, to help further review the accuracy of tax information.

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 5:35 PM with the headline "Beaufort County Treasurer: Auditor miscalculated thousands of vehicle taxes."