Pittsburgh 'made a mistake' on thousands of tax bills

Pittsburgh’s finance department “made a mistake” when it didn’t include tax discounts or abatements on thousands of tax bills this year, city Finance Director Douglas Anderson said Thursday.

“The mistake was made,” Anderson said.

It means several thousand taxpayers in Pittsburgh who use programs like the Homestead exemption or the Allegheny County Senior Tax Relief program may have overpaid their park tax bills.

The problem has been corrected, officials said. Anderson said it isn’t known how many people may have been sent a bill for more than they owed and paid it.

The city mailed out more than 90,000 bills in total this year, Anderson said.

“If there was an overcharge, a taxpayer can apply for a refund or apply it to future taxes,” he said.

Those who don’t ask for a refund will have the amount they overpaid automatically applied to future tax bills, he said.

The finance department had to mail separate bills for the new parks tax, which levies an extra $50 for every $100,000 of assessed property value, to property owners.

For a property with a $15,000 Homestead reduction, it would mean a $7.50 overcharge on the parks tax bill. A property with a $250,000 tax abatement could have been overcharged $125.

The finance department will post a notice about the mistake on its website, Anderson said. But as of Thursday afternoon, it hadn’t.

The issue is the latest the city’s finance department has faced this year. It has a six- to eight-week backlog in processing tax payments that Anderson and other city officials have blamed on the new parks tax, which doubled the amount of bills the city mails.

“Taxpayers have every right to be upset,” Anderson said. “We’re doing everything we can to alleviate the problem.”

To ask for a refund or to ask questions about the issue, people should call the finance department at 412-255-2525, Anderson said.