The code has been cracked— Shoreline and Lake Forest Park residents may unknowingly be paying a monorail tax due to their zipcode.
Three area zip codes in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park are shared with Seattle, and these “split-zips” as officials call them, can lead to billing errors when residents pay for car tabs.
Lars Henrikson, community input coordinator for the monorail project, said people outside the district should not be paying a monorail tax. However, he said there have been some billing errors on the part of the Department of Licensing (DOL). He attributes this problem to computer errors and said DOL computers now have data in their program to remedy the problem.
“There have been some billing errors outside of Seattle,” Henrikson said “There are people who call the office and say they shouldn’t be paying the tax .”
According to Brad Benfield, spokesman for the Washington State DOL, this type of problem has the potential to happen anywhere there are split zip codes. However, he said there have actually been very few calls from citizens who were mistakenly charged.
“It comes down to us not having any idea where those people actually live,” Benfield said about people who live in split-zip areas.
Benfield said this issue is easy to resolve and if the monorail tax was paid in error, a refund can be issued. Residents who were billed for the monorail tax must take proof of address to the DOL to be issued a check.
According to the manager of Wendel’s License and Services, located in Seattle, a Shoreline resident came in on Monday, Feb. 2, who requested a refund from the DOL after he was mistakenly charged the $106 dollars for the monorail tax. However, the manager said there has not been a big problem with people being mistakenly charged.
Before the passage of the monorail project, there was not a method to charge people for a tax such as the monorail tax, Benfield said. Therefore, a model was built that approximated the city of Seattle based on zip codes, and in areas where there are split-zips, data from the Department of Revenue was used to identify areas.
“That process is pretty darn good, but we have identified a few addresses that lie close to the border that were improperly designated as having to pay a monorail tax.” Benfield said
Another problem, Benfield said, is that there are post offices located within the split-zip areas and people with P.O. boxes there might be mistakenly charged.
“There is no way we can possibly know,” Benfield said. “Those people are responsible for taking proof of address to the licensing offices.”
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