Some Crittenden County motor vehicle owners who overpaid their taxes will start receiving refund checks this week.
Crittenden County Clerk Daryl Tabor announced his office is mailing out 14 refunds totaling almost $930 to motor vehicle owners who overpaid in taxes the first three months. He says this is only the first batch of checks.
Tabor says those taxpayers, like those who receive checks in the coming weeks, were ordered by the Kentucky General Assembly to be refunded due to inflated vehicle values as a result of market conditions. As previously reported, lawmakers reset the value on all vehicles to the 2021 level for the 2022 and 2023 tax years.
Initially, Tabor adds, the county’s clerk’s office was going to wait until after the May 17th primary election to begin processing refunds, but he says with a small window of opportunity, he wanted to get the refund process started. Tabor notes refunds already issued range from $17 to $115.
Tabor says each refund is time-consuming with several steps that even include the PVA’s office. He explains that each refund takes about 15 minutes to process start-to-finish, so three weeks between May 18 and the June 8 deadline to have this done can slip by quickly.
According to Tabor, not everyone overpaid on vehicle taxes in January through March before values were rolled back to last year’s level, and he noted some refunds due are less than the price of a postage stamp with the lowest amount due only 22 cents.
Tabor says refunds will be mailed to the first name on the title of the vehicle, no matter who made the payment. He states, as an association, that the state’s county clerks agreed there was no way to trace back who made the actual payment at the time.
Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball has reportedly already mailed out refunds to many taxpayers. However, Tabor says stop payments have been issued on some checks because the refund was going to the current owner of the vehicle if it changed hands after the taxes were paid by the previous owner. Tabor indicates he does not expect that problem with the locally-generated refunds.
