Starting New Claims

The processes on the top row of this menu work with the New Claim table. This is a temporary table where the tax claim information is entered until it has been reviewed and passed several verification steps that are described below.

This process imports tax claims from two text files created by the G&B Tax Collection program into the New Claims table. The program prompts for the Township/Borough to import, the tax type, tax file and drive. The tax type indicates whether to import a municipal file, school file or combined (both) file. Adams County returns the taxes separately and Wayne County returns them together. Tax file indicates whether the file is for Current Year taxes or Previous Year taxes. The Previous Year is used only by Adams County to return school interim taxes issued after the start of the new year. The Drive provides the user the possibility of importing from a drive other than the default location. The default location in Wayne County is \\chfs1\TClaims\taxclaim\YYYY (\\chfs1\TClaims is the UNC for the G: drive) where YYYY is the tax year to import. Before importing the program checks to see if records for this import already exist. If so, then it offers the user the choice of deleting the existing records before importing the file or cancelling the import. The text file containing the tax claim information is named TCYYYYDDX.txt where YYYY is the tax claim year, DD is the district number and X indicates M for municipal, S for School or B for Both. A previous year file will be named the same way with an "I" after the tax type. After the initial import of the tax claim information the program will import a second file named TIYYYYDDX.txt which contains installment payment information. This information is not currently in use but could be used to apply additional qualifications on installment eligibility for a taxpayer.

In the event that a tax collector does not provide an import file the tax claims must be entered with a manual process. This button opens a form that will create a record for each tax claim. The user begins this process by entering a control number or tax map number. The program will use this information to look up the tax information from the billing files. The user needs to verify and correct if necessary each piece of the pre-filled information because it could have changed in the time since the bills were issued. When the information on the form is correct the user can click on the Add Tax Claim button to add the claim to the New Claims table.

This report displays all of the tax claims for a district in a one line format on legal size paper in landscape orientation. It is useful for checking basic information about a return and matching the tax totals with those reported by the tax collector. The user has the choice of Tax Map or Alphabetical order.

This process creates two reports. A two page Tax Claim Return cover page that displays the tax totals and a signature line for the Tax Claim Bureau director on the first page and instructions and sign off location for the taxing authorities on the second. A Tax Claim Return in a format traditionally kept at the counter that includes space for recording payments and other notations.