Other Unpaid Taxes

The Bourbon County Real Estate Tax Statements are starting to arrive and most people are going to see an increase in property taxes this year because of several mill levy increases. The County Commissioners have noted that if all the taxes due were paid, it is likely that the county wouldn’t have needed to raise the mill levy.

But property taxes aren’t the only form of income from the local government. Here is a list from the Kansas Department of Revenue of warrants for some of the other types of unpaid taxes.

Just in Bourbon County, there are over $600,000 in unpaid taxes. Now not all of this money would go to local governments. For example, the bulk of sales tax goes to the state. However, Kansas sales tax has gone up in recent years to deal with revenue shortfall just like the local government bodies have had to raise property taxes.

One of the biggest concerns from this list is that most of these taxes are either sales taxes or witholding taxes. That means they were actually collected from people–most likely Bourbon County citizens–and not remitted to the government. When the government didn’t get the taxes it needed, it had to raise taxes. So in effect, many locals have had to pay taxes twice. Once when it was collected as sales tax for a local purchase and again when the property taxes and sales taxes went up.

Certain types of taxes being unpaid can lead to prison terms for tax fraud which means that the local citizens may end up paying a third time by taxes that are going to cover keeping someone in prison. The best figures I could find for Kansas seem to estimate that it costs about $24,000 per year to keep someone in prison.

Government works when people follow the rules. Unfortunately when some people don’t follow the rules, the costs are distributed to those who do and it is often very expensive.