Thomas Breen photo
Pullen: First comes the letter, then comes the tax bill.
The Elicker administration is stepping up efforts to collect car taxes, by hiring a firm to help identify motor vehicles that aren’t — but should be — on the city’s tax rolls.
Mayor Justin Elicker and Acting City Assessor Alex Pullen detailed that new compliance and enforcement plan during a Monday afternoon press conference at City Hall.
They said that the city has contracted with the Shelton-based firm Municipal Tax Services, LLC (MTS) to figure out which cars have been dodging New Haven taxes by slipping through the cracks of the city’s motor vehicle grand list.
MTS has identified an initial group of around 400 cars that, based on DMV and past tax assessment records, likely should be — but are not currently — registered with the city for tax purposes.
Elicker and Pullen said that the city began sending out letters this week to the owners or lessees of those cars, with the goal of getting them to sign up and then pay their share of local car taxes.
Recipients of those letters will have 30 days to respond and appeal MTS’s findings. Otherwise, their cars will be added to the city’s tax rolls — and they’ll be receiving a tax bill in the mail.
MTS will also be conducting “field work,” Pullen said, by having workers travel around New Haven with an eye out for cars that should be but are not properly registered with the city tax assessor’s office.
Pullen said that MTS will be paid on a contingency basis: They’ll get 38 percent of all taxes recovered, plus a $50 finder’s fee for each vehicle found.
“Nobody likes to pay their taxes,” Elicker conceded, but “it’s our basic civic contract”: invest in government so that government can invest in our community.
Per state law, any motor vehicle (or snowmobile) that, “in the normal course of operation, most frequently leaves from and returns to or remains in a town in this state,” is subject to taxation by that municipality.
As Elicker put it on Monday, “in most cases, where your car sleeps at night” is where it’s legally required to be taxed in Connecticut — regardless of the car’s registration status or license plate.
But in order for the city to levy a tax on a motor vehicle, that car has to be registered on the city’s grand list, which comprises all of New Haven’s taxable property.
Elicker said that New Haven currently has around 58,000 taxable motor vehicles, with an average assessment of $10,000 and a resulting average annual tax bill of $328. This fiscal year, the city collected around $15.3 million in motor vehicle tax revenue, which made up around 2 percent of the overall city budget. (The city’s current motor vehicle mill rate is 32.46. One mill translates to $1 owed in taxes for every $1,000 in assessed value.)
Elicker and Pullen said they cannot estimate just how much potentially taxable motor vehicle value is currently eluding City Hall thanks to tax-eligible cars not being registered with the assessor’s office.
The mayor said, though, that New Haven contracted with MTS between 2009 and 2014, and that the firm’s work led to $1.7 million in undeclared assessed motor vehicle value being added to the city’s tax rolls.
Elicker (right): Paying taxes is "a basic civic contract."