RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Thousands of Richmond residents will end up paying the City a lot more than they originally thought — all due to an “unfortunate glitch” made by the City’s finance department.
When it was determining how much people owe in taxes for their vehicles, the City of Richmond used an accounting method resulting in 13,300 people receiving an incorrect bill for 2022.
According to the City, it used the cost depreciation method to figure out what the vehicles were worth, when it should have used the trade-in value provided by the JD Power pricing guide.
The City of Richmond released a statement in response to the error that reads:
This unfortunate glitch in 2022 affected about 5.5 percent of our billing recipients, which is about 13,000 out of 241,000 vehicles. The current bills for 2023 are correct using the required methodology.
The City uses the clean trade-in value provided by JD Power Pricing to address the fair market values of vehicles as required by state code. The impacted vehicles were mistakenly assessed in 2022 using the Cost Depreciation Method, which automatically produces a smaller assessed fair market value. This glitch means that finance will need to perform a role correction. The correction to the 2022 amount will be handled in a supplemental billing for the impacted owners.
The finance department has been contacting impacted taxpayers to alert them to their increased bill. It is important to note that while their 2023 tax year bill has increased, there are several factors that are driving the increase:
Statement by the City of Richmond
The City said the reduction in Personal Property Tax Relief (PPTR) rate decreased from 50.4% to 36.6 % as approved by City Council.
According to the City, the correction to the 2022 amount will be handled in a supplemental billing for the impacted owners.
As to how the glitch happened and when the City discovered the issue — that information is still unclear.
