When taxes go unpaid that cannot be put on a Tax Sale Certificate such as Personal Property or IOLLs, they end up as Distress Warrants. The MIPS Treasurer system has the ability to manage which statements are allowed to be under distress warrant, and also which statements have already been put under distress warrant. These can be easily managed by selecting the Distress Warrants option under the Utilities menu.
On the left hand side of the screen are the Potential Distress Warrants. This is a list of statements that have the Allow Distress Warrent setting enabled. Usually this includes all Personal Property statements by default, and any IOLL Real Estate statements. On the right hand side of the screen are the parcels that already have at least one statement under distress warrant. In the center of the screen is the Mark All button that will mark all of the potential distress warrant statements as being under distress warrant. This needs to be done before going to print the actual Distress Warrants, usually sometime in November.
Statements can be removed from the Potential Distress Warrants list easily by clicking on the Remove button for that statement in the list. This disables the Allow Distress Warrant setting for that particular statement.
The Distress Warrant state of any statement can be found on the Tax Statement screen.
This can be changed on a per statement basis if needed by clicking the Edit button in the tool bar, changing the appropriate Distress Warrant setting, and then clicking the Save button to save the changes.
20 Day Notices can be printed by clicking on the Print button at the top of the Potential Distress Warrant list, or by going to the Utilities menu and clicking on Print 20 Day Notices. This will display the dialog for printing the 20 day notices.
On this screen, the specific tax year to be printed, and the appropriate tax types can be selected. It is always a good idea to click the PRINT REPORT button to print the Distress Warrant Notice Listing report first. This will list all statements that will be getting a notice based on your selections. Once happy with the list, the notices can either be printed in postcard format or on plain paper by clicking on the POSTCARDS or PLAIN PAPER buttons respectively.
Once all the statements have been marked from the Distress Warrants screen, the actual distress warrants can be printed. Before printing the warrants, it is a good idea to print a Distress Warrant Listing or Distress Warrant Name Listing report to verify the list of warrants to be printed. This can be done under the Print button at the top of the Current Distress Warrants list, or from the Utilities menu. Once satisfied with the list of warrants, they can be printed by selecting the All Distress Warrants option from either the Print button at the top of the Current Distress Warrants list or from the Utilities menu. Choosing the appropriate Warrant Date and Clicking PRINT on the dialog will generate the Distress Warrants for printing.
When collecting on a statement that is under distress warrant, the MIPS Treasurer system will automatically select the Distress Warrant option on the corresponding payment in the shopping cart.
This will add the $2.00 fee to the total to be collected. This amount will automatically be accounted for during month end without the need for any miscellanous receipts or journal entries. The total for distress warrant fees collected can be found in the Distress column on the Tax Collection Listing report for a given date range.
