Your County Tax Commissioner Might Be Profiting Personally From Collecting Your City Taxes

If you grumble about paying taxes, you might have another reason to
complain. A new investigation shows Georgia county tax
commissioners are allowed to profit personally from the collection
of city taxes. Many cities want to pay counties to collect taxes
since it can be easier -- and hypothetically cheaper -- than doing
so themselves. It’s legal in Georgia for tax commissioners to
pocket fees from the process, but no neighboring state allows this
kind of system. And the amount commissioners earn from such fees is
often a mystery, even to the county governments where commissioners
work. Georgia News Lab is behind the investigation. It’s a
collaboration between journalism students, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, and it’s embedded at GPB’s Atlanta
bureau. UGA undergraduate students Anila Yoganathan compiled data
for the News Lab story, and fellow Bulldog Erin Schilling was one
of the main writers on the project. They joined News Lab head David
Armstrong in telling On Second