Finance Commissioner says late fees showing up online are being reversed for payments postmarked by Aug. 5
Syracuse, N.Y. – Finance Commissioner Brad O’Connor announced the City of Syracuse Department of Finance has cleared up more than half of the tax payments delayed by a processing system error. The Department expects to have all of the payments processed by the end of August.
While late fees have appeared online for payments affected by the delay, the Department says fees will be waived before being assessed to property owners. The processing delay affected about 10,000 first-quarter school and property tax payments made by mail. It was caused by an incorrect numeric code on payment stubs used for automated processing.
“We apologize for this error. For mail payments, we have dedicated additional staff resources to processing the payments,” said Commissioner O’Connor. “We’ve made significant progress and will have all the payments cleared up and late fees reversed by the end of the month.”
The Finance Department has established a processing plan to prevent any delays on payments made by mail in future quarters. Online and in person payments are not affected. The Department is also establishing new protocols to prevent the error that caused the first quarter processing delay, O’Connor said.
The Syracuse Common Council Finance Committee will conduct a meeting regarding the tax processing delays on Thursday, Aug. 26.
