June may seem like a long way off, and it is early seeing that the city budget is just in the process of coming together, but City Assessor Christopher Celeste is already thinking about tax bills.

He’s planning to send everyone who owes taxes a bill. That’s about 100,000 bills.

That would seem to be logical. People who owe taxes get bills. The reality is that thousands of taxpayers never get to see a bill. That’s because their bill goes to the financial institution that holds their mortgage and a portion of their monthly payment goes into an escrow account to pay taxes. With more and more electronic payments, banks are requesting the city stop sending them hard copies of the bill.

Celeste thinks many people don’t know what they pay in taxes. Because they don’t get the bill, they don’t see a breakdown of where they money goes between the city and schools or the amount of state aid going to the city. Just as important, they aren’t informed of the exemptions they may be entitled to receive. That information is on the back of the bill.

That’s the reason Celeste sent letters to 6,000 seniors last month informing them of the Circuit Breaker program. As it happens, the 6,000 are already receiving an exemption as a senior citizen. Depending of their income, they may also be eligible to receive up to a $1,000 tax credit.

The letter outlines the procedure for filing along with the March 15 deadline for filing. Of course, March 15 was Sunday and city offices weren’t open. Celeste says the deadline has been extended about two weeks, as the letters were late in getting into the mail. Because eligibility is income- as well as age-based, recipients must apply annually for the exemption. The application requires copies of the 2014 tax return, Social Security payments, 1099 form for payments from a financial institution and forms for pension and retirement payments, plus an income form that is signed before a notary public in the assessors’ office. There are five ranges of income with a $1,000 tax credit going to the taxpayer making $16,544 or less. At the other end of the scale the taxpayer making $22,749 to $24,815 is eligible for a $600 tax credit.

That may sound like a lot of paperwork.

Nonetheless, Celeste is looking to streamline the exemption process wherever possible. He said he has removed Social Security numbers from some forms – as that is not pertinent to the process – as well as extraneous questions.

He said he is looking to make the process easy and as transparent as possible. He is an advocate of making information available to the public and is looking to put the exemption application online.

Of the more than 500 receiving tax credits under the Circuit Breaker program, 283 were at the lowest end of the income range and received $1,000 tax credits.

The senior exemption constitutes the largest of exemptions at 6,062, followed by veterans at 3,489. There are also exemptions for prisoners of war, gold star mothers, the blind and the 100-percent disabled. In all, 10,309 received exemptions in the current tax year. The total value of those exemptions was $177.8 million, translating into $3.5 million in what would have otherwise been tax revenues.

As for the bill for next year’s taxes, Celeste expects there could be some confusion, and some people may pay the bill in addition to having the payment come from their escrow account. He feels that is a small problem to deal with by what is gained by informing taxpayers what they’re paying for and the exemptions they’re entitled to receive.