New payment options, from 24-hour kiosks to cryptocurrency, could be on the way for those paying taxes and fees to the Fairfax County government.
If one county leader has his way, there also could be lower surcharges for those paying by credit and debit cards.
At a information technology committee on Tuesday (Oct. 29), the Board of Supervisors received an update on the county’s efforts in recent years to improve the experience of those paying local taxes and fees, along with a preview of what might be on the horizon.
The board allocated funding last spring for the tax modernization project, which aims to upgrade the aging technology infrastructure that has bedeviled county officials and, at times, confounded those trying to pay their tax bills.
“We had some rough years,” Robert Barr, a division director in the county’s Department of Information Technology (DIT), said.
While it looked at past improvements, including a platform change for the county’s tax relief system and a more efficient submission process for real estate tax appeals, the presentation also highlighted future initiatives to support local businesses and residents in their interactions with local tax officials and the broader government.
“We’re working on that overall vision,” DIT Director Greg Scott said. “We have a tremendous amount of data in Fairfax; we need to harness it.”
That line of thinking pleased Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, who chairs the IT committee and has pressed staff to accelerate efforts to create a single, one-stop-shop portal for residents and business owners.
Herrity suggested Amazon, which can provide its shoppers all the information about their various interactions in an easy-to-navigate online format, should be the goal in Fairfax.
“Our customers don’t want to go from taxes to libraries to whatever” by navigating across various online platforms, Herrity said.
The county already has a limited online payment and data portal — MyFairfax — that has 350,000 users — an increase of 114% in the past four years. An additional 300,000 users pay taxes online using one-time options offered by the county, a figure that’s increased 39% during the same four-year period.
Staff said a number of improvements have been made to enable payments in a variety of formats. For those paying taxes and fees in person, ApplePay became available in June, followed by “tap” payments and debit-card acceptance in August.
More options are under consideration, including Google Pay, PayPal, Zelle and Samsung Wallet.
Upgrades to the county’s call center also are on the agenda following investments to improve access times for online services, which can get bogged down during times when major categories of tax bills become due.
Franconia District Supervisor Rodney Lusk said it was “phenomenal to see all the changes,” and asked whether local residents would one day be able to pay in cryptocurrency.
The answer came back as a maybe, as local officials first would have to first surmount regulatory and operational hurdles.
One development likely to come to fruition more quickly is installations of standalone payment kiosks, some accessible 24 hours a day, where residents could pay personal property taxes by cash, check or credit/debit card.
The first four kiosks are anticipated to be located at the Fairfax County Government Center and the North County, South County and Mason District governmental centers. If the effort meets expectations, it could expand to more locations and allow for payment of real estate taxes and other fees.
Board Chairman Jeff McKay voiced concern about transaction fees charged with credit and debit card payments, which currently add 2.35% of the total amount owed to cover costs assessed by a third-party processor.
Transactions involving Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express credit cards and MasterCard and Visa debit cards all incur the charge, which goes to the vendor, not the county government.
McKay called it “really frustrating” that the surcharge is passed along in full to the consumer under the county’s ordinances. A change would require action by the Board of Supervisors, which could perhaps try negotiating a lower processing rate or have the government absorb some of the surcharge, at least for personal property taxes.
“It seems the kind of thing we should look at,” McKay said.
