Monorail tax bills going to residents outside Seattle

Nearly two years after the state began collecting vehicle taxes to support Seattle's expanded monorail, an untold number of people outside the city are still getting license renewal bills with the hefty monorail tax erroneously added to them.

How many get these unwanted and unwarranted bills isn't clear.

The numbers appear to be small and declining. But licensing agencies handle hundreds of them in a year.

And it was something of a shock when one came in the mail a few days ago for Barbara Hartley and her husband in Lake Forest Park.

Hartley said she and her husband, Steven, have lived at the same address, more than two miles north of the Seattle city limits, for 10 years and couldn't understand why they got a $352 renewal bill for their 2003 Mazda, which included $263 in monorail taxes.

"The bottom line is, how can they not figure out that address?" asked Hartley, a property manager who works in Seattle.

"How hard is that? It's 2005, not 1812. ... We can do satellite imaging of a fly."

The monorail levy is an excise tax charged against the value of cars and trucks registered to residents and businesses in the city. It finances the agency and more than 80 employees who are planning the 14-mile system to link Crown Hill to West Seattle via downtown.

The rate is 1.4 percent of the vehicle's value, which can amount to several hundred dollars a year.

Hartley said she didn't notice the monorail tax until she'd looked closely at her bill and noticed it seemed high. She discovered the wrong amount when reading the fine print at the top of the notice, which lists parts of the charge.

"It does look like it wasn't a mistake. They're just saying, 'Hi, if you're living in or out (of the city) just let us know, but meanwhile this is coming at you,' " she said.

The state Department of Licensing has an online license renewal system, but it can't be used to correct the state's assumption about a driver's address, which is supposed to determine whether the motorist lives in Seattle and owes the tax. .

To correct the error, the owner of the vehicle must take their renewal notice to a license outlet. "For the average person ... to make an appointment to go down there and take a number and wait to pay your tabs ... who wants to do that?" Hartley asked.

Probably no one. But Brad Benfield, spokesman for the Department of Licensing, said that's the best way for the state to determine where a motorist lives -- by the old-fashioned method of looking at a map.

"Our (computer) system just doesn't have that capability," he said. "The (licensing) clerk can evaluate the address and look at a map."

Benfield said the state system uses postal ZIP code information to determine who lives inside Seattle and who lives outside its boundaries and backs this up with a Department of Revenue geographic-information system that has addresses listed by city.

That system isn't foolproof, however, particularly in cases where ZIP codes overlap Seattle city boundaries. And "we can find the location (of a home) if the address is in the Department of Revenue GIS system. Some are not," Benfield said.

Neither Benfield nor staffers at three Seattle licensing outlets could provide figures on how many motorists are erroneously billed for monorail taxes. But hundreds of Seattle-area residents get renewal notices saying it's unclear to the state system whether they must pay the monorail tax and many of them are showing up with those questionable bills during the year.

"It's two or three times a day, an average, through the week," said Angelle Henkel, a clerk at the Bill Pierre License Agency in Seattle's Lake City neighborhood.

She said clerks at her outlet check all addresses to make sure vehicle owners outside Seattle don't pay the monorail tax, because it's good business for her employer to save customers some money. To get an unwarranted monorail tax taken off a license bill, motorists fill out a form stating where their "primary residence" is. If it's outside Seattle, there's no monorail tax.

Motorists can be prosecuted for perjury if they lie about where they live to avoid the monorail tax.

Clerks also file a "certificate of fact" to send to the state once they determine that the motorist lives outside Seattle. There's no additional fee for the extra paperwork. "If there's any doubt, we are allowed to override the monorail tax if the customer insists they are not in the city," said Loretta Schmieder, manager of the White Center Licensing Center in South Seattle. "We haven't had too many problems."

According to figures supplied by state spokesman Benfield, the number of mistaken tax bills appears to be small. Of the nearly $35 million in monorail excise taxes collected from last March through December, less than $80,000 had to be refunded and part of the refunds were because cars were wrecked or the owners moved before the renewal period began. Benfield could not say what percentage of the refunds was due to wrong addresses.

He said the number of erroneous billings appears to be dropping as motorists correct the mistakes and the corrections are added to their ongoing vehicle records.

In January, the state sent out 31,453 notices with monorail taxes on them, and 373 notices with the tax that indicated it was not clear from an address that the tax was owed. In January 2004, the state sent out 32,914 notices with the taxes, but only 1,064 others with uncertain addresses for tax purposes.

The state system will never be 100 percent correct, Benfield said, because the geographic-information system will never contain all the new streets being developed.

When people move to new addresses, "it's going to choke the computer once in a while," he said.

TO LEARN MORE

Questions about whether you live in Seattle and pay the monorail tax? Call the excise tax hotline at the Seattle Monorail Project, 206-587-1700, send an e-mail to info@elevated.org or call the customer-service desk at the state Department of Licensing at 360-902-3770.

P-I reporter Larry Lange can be reached at 206-448-8313 or larrylange@seattlepi.com

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