County of Hawaii Citizens to Pay Taxes via Internet and Telephone - New Services - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, Oct, 2001

Official Payments Corp. announced a new business award with the County of Hawaii.

The award entails a new Internet and telephone payment system that will

enable citizens to charge property taxes to their credit cards. The contract represents the firm's first business within the state of Hawaii. With this addition, Official Payments now provides credit card payment services to the Internal Revenue Service, 18 state governments, the District of Columbia, and over 900 counties and municipalities in 49 states across the country.

The County of Hawaii encompasses the entire island of Hawaii, also known as the Big Island. The county's Finance Department collects approximately $91 million in property taxes annually on over 128,000 land parcels. According to Bill Takaba, County of Hawaii Director of Finance, "the county elected to begin accepting payments electronically in order to improve the efficiency of our department and make the process of paying taxes easier on our citizens."

When the systems are launched later this year, taxpayers in the County of Hawaii will be able to use the American Express Card, Discover Card, VISA, and MasterCard to make their tax payments by visiting www.officialpayments.com on the Internet or by calling 1-800-2PAY-TAX. Official Payments charges taxpayers a convenience fee for processing these credit card transactions. The fee schedule can be found on the Internet at www.officialpayments.com. As a bonus, taxpayers using credit cards with bonus rewards programs can, depending on their card's program, earn rewards, points, and cash-back or airline frequent flyer miles for paying their taxes.