For several years, Lawrence made sales tax mistakes on water, trash bills; some customers may be due small refund

The city of Lawrence recently discovered it has been incorrectly taxing as many as 2,000 solid waste customers, adding to a list of other billing errors that the city has discovered over the past two years.

Customers who requested an additional trash cart were mistakenly being charged sales tax for the cart, while other customers were not charged sales tax on the purchase of certain yard waste and other bins when they should have been. The city discovered the incorrectly assessed taxes for solid waste containers after a different sales tax error, discovered by the state of Kansas, prompted the city to review its utility billings, according to a city staff memo recently provided to the Lawrence City Commission.

In total, the city isn’t sure how much it overcharged in sales taxes because billing records for 2012, when the mistaken billing began, aren’t readily available. But between September 2013 and June 2018 — when the error was discovered — the city overcharged sales taxes by about $37,000. Customers who had an extra trash cart and were incorrectly charged the sales tax can apply for a refund, which in most cases will be about $4 a year, with a maximum of $12 in total.