Follow the Money Trail (Part 1)

During this time of budget cuts and bailouts, county tax assessors in a number of Midwestern U.S. counties are finding it easier than ever to increase their revenue. How? By collecting taxes from landowners who are claiming homestead exemptions for multiple properties.

Typically, this process had been easier said than done. Before using our system, many counties used a manual process for finding people who have made erroneous homestead exemption claims. Conflicting software across counties and the decentralized nature of the information made it difficult, time-consuming work.

Now, these counties simply upload their tax roll/assessing data to our secure government services Web site, and in return receive a consolidated list of potential violators and their contact information.

Feedback from counties indicates that it really is that simple ... and that the ROI on this project is extremely high. In fact, county treasurers and equalization directors in one state have said that this is one of the best tools with which they have ever been provided.

Follow the Money Trail (Part 2)

Read Part 1 and then fast forward a few months ... Counties are quick to realize the benefits - and the revenue stream - of our automated system to generate a list of homeowners claiming principal residency for more than one parcel.

But several counties report that they have just one problem:
So many potential fraudulent claims, so little time!

In many instances, our system generates an overabundance of leads. This is a good thing, but only insofar as counties have the resources to follow up on those leads to begin the collection process.

In order to recover and collect the greatest amount of money using our system, counties are again turning to Morley for help. With our extensive knowledge base, government relationships and technology tools, we are able to aggregate, analyze and filter the initial leads lists in order to confirm the identities of homeowners with more than one claim.

Our method for this verification process has proven so effective that we are able to offer it to counties with no initial investment or startup cost. Counties simply pay us a flat fee for each violation that we confirm. In other words, we don't get paid for our work unless we correctly identify tax violations. We assume the risk, and the counties collect far more revenue than is possible utilizing their current staffing.

Before they first began using our system, counties never really knew the full extent of Principal Residency/Homestead Exemption abuses. By using our technology and processes, counties are able to leverage this self-funding program to substantially increase their revenue.