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