Charleston County consolidates some tax offices

Charleston County has consolidated some of its tax offices as part of the expense-trimming needed to balance the recently approved budget.

County officials said services won't be noticeably reduced, despite the elimination of nine positions.

Most county residents, at least the ones who pay their taxes on time, shouldn't notice any changes, officials said.

The county has moved the Delinquent Tax Office from downtown Charleston to the Revenue Collections Department in the county's North Charleston administration building. The county Treasurer's Office has taken over the job of accepting delinquent tax payments.

That means someone with a delinquent tax bill who wants to pay the bill in person would now go to one of the county Treasurer's Office locations, one of which is downtown.

"I think the driving point was to save the county some money," said Treasurer Andrew Smith. "It wasn't my idea, but I'm happy to go along with it."

The consolidation shifts more of the work of accepting tax payments to the treasurer, and consolidates more billing and enforcement work in Revenue Collections.

The county has eliminated eight part-time positions and one full-time position as part of the consolidation. In anticipation of the decision, all the positions had remained vacant as employees left.

The county is also working on consolidating some of its billing practices. For example, the county plans to start putting stormwater fees on its property tax bills, eliminating the expense of sending separate bills for the stormwater fee.

"It's a $35,000 savings in postage right away," said Elbert Matthews, director of the Revenue Collections Department.

He said county attorneys are working on a way to bill for delinquent property tax, solid waste and stormwater fees with a single notice, rather than the current practice of sending individual notices for each delinquent charge.

"The whole thing we are trying to do is make things easier for the public," said Matthews. "We're trying to group certain functions together, in a way that makes sense."