About Property Tax

One of the County Treasurer’s responsibilities is to collect taxes for real estate property, mobile homes, utilities, bushels of grain, monies and credits, buildings on leased land, and city and county special assessments, including delinquent sewer rental and solid waste rates and charges for all tax levying and tax certifying entities of the county.

The Treasurer is also responsible for processing tax suspensions, preparing plat and mobile home tax clearances, and administering the Iowa Property Tax Credit Program based on age/income.
Annual tax statements are mailed once a year. Your property tax payment may be paid in one full installment or two half installments. The first half is due on September 1 and becomes delinquent after September 30. The second half is due March 1 and becomes delinquent after March 31. If you have not received a tax statement you should contact your County Treasurer’s office to obtain a duplicate statement.

Failure to receive a tax statement is not a defense to the payment of the tax and any late interest that has accrued. Iowa law requires the County Treasurer to assess late interest on all delinquent payments at the rate of 1.5% per month (rounded to the nearest dollar) with a minimum of one dollar.

The U.S. Postal Service postmark is the only date recognized for the date of mailing. The date written on your check or a business metered date will not be accepted as proof of the mailing date. Before mailing your payment, check with your local post office to make sure the postmark date will be prior to the late interest date. If you want to be sure that your payment has a postmark before the late interest date, have the post office postmark the envelope in your presence.
When the last day of the month is a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, the deadline for remitting payment without late interest or additional late interest is extended to include the first business day of the following month (the extension does not apply to tax sales that occurred before June 1, 2006).

The County Treasurer is responsible for the administration of the Annual Tax Sale and must offer for sale, in an open competitive bidding process, parcels for which taxes have become delinquent. The Annual Tax Sale takes place in June of each year.