Publicizing Names of Delinquent Taxpayers Should Aid Collection

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

An opinion columnist at the Daily Press has a modest proposal of sorts: give better visibility to the list of ?deadbeat business taxpayers? that the Virginia Department of Taxation has compiled.

As it currently stands, finding the list of debtors isn?t as easy as simply going to http://tax.virginia.gov/. If you watch the crawling text at the top of the page, though, you?ll find a link to the Delinquent Taxpayer List.

Waiting for a crawl is not terribly intuitive ? and, as the columnist argues, not really effective. If the point of the list is to shame debtors into paying their back taxes, the list needs to be posted somewhere shameworthy. Possibly coupled with unflattering photos of debtors in mid-chew with bedhead.

To be removed from the list, businesses must either (a) pay the debt in full; (b) establish an acceptable payment agreement; or (c) accept a compromise offer. If the names and addresses of these businesses were better advertised ? the columnist suggests broadcasting the names on local access cable; but seriously, who besides shut-ins and folks who?ve lost the remote watch that? ? the results might be more impressive. With little publicity of the list, the Virginia Department of Taxation has already collected a half-million dollars.

It?s a compelling proposal. In today?s environment of identity protection, though, it will be interesting to see if anyone in the department of taxation listens.