One of the local counties is concerned since not many people have bought their car stickers for the next six months. If you don’t have the sticker (indicating you paid some tax of some sort) you can get thrown in jail, charged a penalty, and have to pay for the sticker.

Now, one might wonder why many people have skipped paying this year? It turns out the IBM printer from the early 70’s (my best estimate from the news video) stopped working at some point as it was printing out names on that old school wide green and white stripped paper with that tear-away edge thing with holes in it (the technology is so old I can’t even remember the name).

Did they care that it stopped? Did they bother to try to tell people that they had to pay their car tax?

No. Of course not. Here in VA the city, county, or commonwealth are under no obligation to tell you when taxes are due. They assume that if you don’t receive any bill, or any other notice, that you will always remember to pay a $25 car tax by Feb 15 every year. Yeah, that is always the first thing on the top of my mind.

I really wish that if they KNEW their ancient system had stopped functioning, they would at least try to do it again. Instead they just can’t wait so they can charge everyone double the price when they do have to pay the tax (the lovely surcharge).

I once got screwed by this village when I never received a notice of a $29 business tax I owed them. A month later I received a bill from them for $54. They stated I didn’t properly pay my taxes on time. I told them I had never received anything and they could care less. Did they check to see I haven’t been late on a bill in the 6.5 years I’ve lived here? No. Did they have any way to look in their records to see where the first bill had been sent (I had moved recently). They said they had no way of knowing that information. They really seem to know very little around here.

To show you how much they know, I’m heading off to the local court in a few weeks to do a bit of chatting. I’ll let you know what I’m up to as the time approaches.