ROBERT PIERCE

    • Leader & Times

In an effort to keep up with technology, make payments more convenient, serve taxpayers better and protect taxpayer interests, the Seward County Treasurer’s office recently announced the implementation of a new payment portal..

The portal is scheduled to go live today right before the start of the county’s new property tax year Sunday.

Treasurer Mary Rose said the online portal will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and she said with several ways to pay, the system too keeps up with innovation. She, however, said it is something only available for taxes and insufficient checks.

“It will not be for motor vehicles,” she said. "That still goes through the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR).”

The county’s soon to be former portal was through the Kansas County Treasurers Association (KCTA), and with access only available in November and December, Rose said there was a limited time window to file taxes. She added the new portal is cleaner and different.

“It’s updated at midnight every night,” she said. “Everything’s up to date. It’s easier to maneuver within. It’s user friendly. It has the software that is going to be easier to understand. You can read it, print stuff off of it.”

Likewise, Rose said the new portal helps catch any back taxes for people and parcels.

“It’s going to catch that and be easier to find and maneuver through,” she said.

Rose said making something that was user friendly was the primary goal of the new portal.

“It doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything to go through,” she said. “The software company we’re using for the portal is fee charged.  They charged the customer for using that a minimal percentage.”

This, Rose said, does not come directly from taxpayers in terms of taxes and mill levies, but rather from the users of the system.

“It’s fee-based exactly how the Kansas Department of Revenue’s is as well,” she said. “It’s in line with that. Doing that was to make it convenient for the taxpayer. A lot of people now go off of technology to pay, do everything on our smartphones or their computer. They’ll be able to maneuver, print statements, see up to date. There’s several ways it’s going to be able to pay. I believe Apple Pay’s going to be on there, Venmo, and CashApp.”

Rose said the portal has features not available in the treasurer’s office itself.

“You’re going to be able to pay a little differently, use a lot more ways of payment method,” she said. “Just changing that allows us to be available to the taxpayer every day of the year.”

With people working at all hours of the day, Rose said the portal will allow them to make payments anytime of the day.

“If it’s real estate, they can do partial payments,” she said. “They don’t necessarily have to do full payments. They’ll be able to do that anytime they’re given time – on the road, at night.”

Rose said having the portal available to taxpayers is huge step innovation wise for her department.

“I don’t want to say we’re going to keep it forever, but we’re going to try this,” she said. “We’re going with this company and see how it does. If it’s something we like after a year, we might switch other things in the department to this company.”

The company providing the portal, Rose said, is one of the top companies when it comes to the security, safety and privacy of taxpayers with the payment process.

“They do a lot of trial stuff,” she said. “They have a whole division that is against fraud. They’re keeping up with how these fraudsters are going in there and taking your information.”

Above all else, Rose said the portal is efficient, dependable and safe.

“A big thing is making sure your stuff is kept confidential and private,” she said. “It’s not leaked out. Whenever you’re using your bank account or credit card, we need to be able to protect that. This company has a solid brick wall where it has that covered. The taxpayer will be happy with that as well.”

The KDOR program the treasurer’s office uses was implemented in 2008, and Rose said updates are done on a regular basis.

“That is strictly confidential,” she said. “Nobody has access to your motor vehicle payments. We have monthly meetings. We have constant contact with the Kansas Department of Revenue. With their software, they are very up to date in innovation.”

A second system used in the treasurer’s office is for taxes and implemented in 2023, and Rose said that software company has guardrails to protect taxpayers.

While all measures are made to keep taxpayer information confidential, Rose said there is a point at which some tax information is releasable.

“A person’s name and address can be releasable if permissable,” she said. “Your e-mail, your telephone number, your Social Security number, date of birth, that is not releasable. That is something I have strongly had to fight to make sure we stay within those statutes and within those guardrails.”

Rose said the county has guardrails set in stones, though.

“The taxes are handled by several departments,” she said. “We have the appraisers who handle some of those tax records. The clerk’s office handles some of those tax records, and the treasurer’s office does handle those tax records. I can’t sit here and say every department has those guardrails and is protected, but I can tell you my office always holds your privacy on what is provided under the court of law protection for you.”

Rose said protection measures are particularly important for the local elderly population.

“We have to be mindful of stuff,” she said. “We have people who will get your address. We haven’t had this happen, but we still have to be very guarded and protected.”

As with the rest of the country, Rose said Seward County’s elderly too have been taken advantage of when it comes to their information.

“With respect to that, we’re going to make sure we keep that information or find out what’s going on,” she said.

Release of information, Rose said, is done according to state statutes.

“We also love the people of Seward County, and if somebody were to say, ‘They got my information from the treasurer’s office, and now, look what’s happened to me. I’ve got this lien against me,’ that would be hurtful,” she said. “Our employees are mindful of that. They’re mindful of everything. We have guardrails put up. We have laws we have to abide by. We’re going to do whatever we can to help the taxpayer and protect your information as much as we can.”

As payments are made on a daily basis, Rose said so too can reports.

“We will have to integrate into the software system, our taxing system,” she said. “Until we can get that to flow correctly, we’re going to have our mishaps. It’s going to take us a week or two to know how we’re going to post this.”

Rose said there are instances when spouses make payments at different times of day, and should that happen, the treasurer’s office can fix the problem that day.

“We’re able to give that check back to the customer or take that card,” she said. “We’re not able to do double payments. That helps a lot because we’re able to see that instantly, and we’re able to fix that for the taxpayer. We see that a lot when houses are being sold or whenever a customer has a new mortgage, and the mortgage company paid them. They didn’t know that, and they came in and pay. That money goes back to the taxpayer. We have to refund that somewhere. We see that a lot between refinances and new houses. It’s going to allow us to catch stuff like that.”

Rose said receipts will be sent directly to taxpayers from the portal. They can also request a receipt from the treasurer’s office as well.

“You’ll get a confirmation receipt in your e-mail for your payment,” she said. “You’ll keep that for your records. You’ve got to give us some patience and grace, and we’re going to work through the kinks and get it going.”

Rose said as her office transitions to the new online payment system, customers may experience longer wait times and temporary delays while employees become familiar with the updated software, and she asked for patience and understanding during the transition. She is hopeful those glitches will be fixed in the first two weeks of the portal.

“The first day it’s implemented, we’ll go through a training session, and the next day when we go for the integration, we’ll go through another training session,” she said. “We do have some training we’ve got to on our end to make sure we’ve got all of our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed. Give us some time to do that. I’m hoping to have all of the bugs out by mid-November when we’re done doing statements.”

Rose said she is excited about the new portal, and so too are her employees. She hopes the taxpayers will be excited about it as well. Making the portal a reality is something she said has taken  some time.

“I had a work session with the commission on April 6, brought it to them first,” she said. “It was going to cost $1,800 to implement it. I have a technology fund, so it wasn’t going to affect the taxpayer. We went back and forth with the contract. The county counsel was going over the contract back and forth. Finally, we got that done. We went in and got it signed.”

When that was done, Rose said she wanted to clean up the county’s books to catch up on more than 20 years of property taxes, something she said has not happened yet.

“We had the implementation process,” she said. “We had to wait. They had to build some stuff for us. I was in contact with the software company. We got payment over to them, and they’ve just been building the program for us, our Web page, our integration part.”

Rose said while the goal was to get the portal in place before tax season, she said reaching that goal has been a process.

“Going from April to October and meeting it at the very end is a pretty close call, but we’re going to get it,” she said.

To access the portal, Rose said a link will be posted on the treasurer’s page on the county’s Web site at www.sewardcountyks.org.

“You’ll be able to take that link from the county treasurer when it is up and ready to go,” she said. “We’ll be able to hopefully do something amazing on the page that says, ‘New portal. Click here.’ Hopefully, we’ll be able to put a focal point on that so they’ll be able to know this is where I click, and it’ll take it. Real estate agents are going to like it. It’s going to be more user friendly for them.”

Rose said she appreciates all input from her staff on the portal and other office issues.

“I may not ask for it, but I get it. I do ask for it a lot,” she said. “We’ll make it where you can catch it, and they can click on that link and get where they need to go. I don’t think the taxpayer’s going to have an issue getting there.”