DATE: Thursday, July 31, 1997               TAG: 9707310394

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LOUIS HANSEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT                     LENGTH:   60 lines

50 RESIDENTS OF ISLE OF WIGHT GET TAX BILLS FROM YEARS AGO ONE RESIDENT SUES, SAYING TAXES FROM 2 TO 6 YEARS AGO ARE TOO OLD TO COLLECT.

More than 50 Isle of Wight County residents received notices in May for delinquent taxes from two to six years ago, and one resident has filed a lawsuit contending that the bills are too old to be collected.

``We were surprised,'' said Karen M. Rye, who received notice of $424 owed from 1991. ``Even the IRS . . . can only come after you from six years past.''

Isle of Wight Treasurer Beryl H. Perry Jr. said his department accepts some of the responsibility for the late notices.

``The taxpayers weren't at fault,'' Perry said. County records show that bills were sent out to the 50 or so affected taxpayers but that no follow-up notices were sent.

Some of the notices included late fees and penalties. The department has forgiven the added fees when people protested, Perry said. Otherwise, they were collected.

``The easiest thing to do would be to not collect these,'' he said. ``But we have to do it.''

Rye was so displeased she filed suit against the county July 16. She said she never received a notice that she owed the 1991 tax.

The suit alleges that the county has only three years to collect back taxes. Perry said the county has 20 years to collect.

Rye has paid her bill under protest. ``That's kind of unfair,'' she said. All her other county taxes are current.

County Attorney H. Woodrow Crook Jr. filed a motion Tuesday to have Rye's suit dismissed.

Most of the taxpayers who received delinquent notices were billed for several hundred dollars, Perry said.

These supplemental bills were for properties that were improved from 1991 through 1996, he said.

Perry said the problem involved a shortcoming in the department's software, which made it difficult to track properties that were improved and reassessed in midyear.

Perry said a recently installed computer system has made it easier to track such properties, and that his office has found all delinquent taxes for 1991-96.

Rye and her husband, Volpe M. Boykin, bought four acres on Burdette Road and built a log house in 1991.

Two tax assessments were made - one for the property and one for the new home. Rye and Boykin are being charged taxes on the home for the second half of 1991.

``I don't know if anyone has realy explained it (to me),'' she said. ``It's still a mystery at this point.''

Smithfield lawyer William H. Riddick III said that he has been approached by about a half-dozen county residents who received delinquent bills and that there may be further litigation.

The delinquent notices went out ``with no explanation or apology,'' he said.

Perry said the oversight by his office offered some benefit for those county taxpayers.

``They've had the use of their money for five or six years,'' he said. ``It's like an interest-free loan.''

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