Unpaid taxes pile up for business owners

PROVO — Delinquent Utah County businesses aggregately owe the county more than $1 million in past-due personal property taxes.

The figure, compiled by the Utah County Assessor's Office, represents the 3 percent of county businesses that are not compliant with their personal property taxes.

The county treasurer's office is responsible for collections. Some of the delinquent businesses no longer exist or are in bankruptcy; for the rest, however, seizure of personal property to satisfy the owed taxes is the ultimate consequence.

"We'll work with (the businesses)," said County Assessor Kris Poulson. "But in situations where we're not making any progress we can resort to seizures.

"There were only two counts where we did actually go to seizure last year. But in both of those, we never did sell anything; creditors usually step in and pay the amount before the sale."

The county commissioners can set up payment contracts with businesses owing money on their personal property taxes, according to Poulson.

Two kinds of business property taxes exist: personal and real. The business personal property taxes account for only 7.5 percent of the business taxes handled by the county.

The strict enforcement of business personal property tax payment in the county coincided with Poulson's ascension to the county assessor's post 2 1/2 years ago.

Said Poulson: "It's not something that I'd say I've focused on; it's more of something that needed to be done.

"It's inequitable to let some businesses be delinquent and not pay taxes while all the others are."

The largest outstanding personal property tax amount currently is $60,607. The next two are $46,129 and $45,244.

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