By Curt Peterson
Killington Town Clerk and Treasurer Lucrecia Wonsor delivered some good news to the Select Board at its Oct. 1 special meeting — the amount of education taxes due to the state from the town has been reduced by about 3% as the result of an error correction.
Wonsor told the Mountain Times the original amount due was $11,837,575. The corrected amount is about $300,000 less.
“Killington has just over 3,700 taxable parcels,” Wonsor said.
The tax correction will save the town an average of $81 per taxable parcel. Of course, individual owners will benefit relative to their property’s assessed value.
How did the error come about?
“The tax filing deadline extension to July 15 caused quite a backup, and the state tax department didn’t send the most recent tax credit file to the agency of education-finance,” Wonsor explained. “This resulted in incorrect cash flow reports being sent to the towns.”
“Our corrected cash flow has us sending $9,761,598 to the state,” Wonsor said.
Additionally, the town will send $2,075,977 to the Windsor Central Unified Union School District. That amount did not change due to the correction process.
Wonsor said other towns have experienced larger errors and corrections.
“Clerks/treasurers immediately contacted the agency of education-finance for information supporting the large increases,” she said. That was how the mistake was discovered, she added.
“The agency was very responsive and this was all fixed within a couple of days,” she said. “There is always an additional update before our June payment to the state is due. Typically the amount we have to send goes down around another $50,000.”
