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Iowa Counties Introduce Online Property Tax Payments

The Iowa State County Treasurers Association and Iowa's Information Technology Department jointly developed the online service.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- State and local government officials have joined forces to roll out a service that will allow residents of the state to pay property taxes online in 70 of the state's 99 counties.

The online property tax payment system is the first interactive government service offered to Iowa citizens via the Internet and was developed as a joint effort between the Iowa State County Treasurers Association and Iowa's Information Technology Department.

The service is the only way for Iowa residents to pay property taxes with major credit cards and e-Checks, which allow taxpayers to use regular checking accounts by entering information from paper checks into a Web site. All charges are processed through Iowa's secure payment server.

The Iowa State County Treasurers Association developed its Web site and tax payment service through a partnership between Iowa's Information Technology Division and Iowa Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the NIC which manages Iowa's Web site.

Iowa officials said they believe this new effort is one of the nation's largest intergovernmental technology collaborations, adding that the service is expected to include 75 counties by the end of the year, and, next year, all 99 Iowa counties plan to offer the service.

"This collaboration between state and local government leverages the technology infrastructure put in place by state government to benefit county governments and their constituents," said Richard Varn, director of Iowa's Information Technology Division and Iowa's CIO.

The service was built through a self-funding model that required no state or county taxpayer funds. To support the costs of development and ongoing maintenance, a small service delivery fee will be applied to each tax payment transaction.

"By working together with the state of Iowa and NIC, we were able to use this innovative funding model to support Iowa county treasurers," said Mary Maloney, president of the Iowa State County Treasurer's Association.

More than 500 property tax payments have been processed since the online service launched on September 1. Credit card payments and e-Checks are equally popular, according to Kay Arvidson, director of Marketing for Iowa Interactive.