Assessor’s office installs TAXscribe system

Taxpayers and tax professionals can now file St. Mary Parish LAT 5 personal property reports through TAXscribe, an online listing and reporting application.
Assessor Jarrod K. Longman called it “another step forward for the Assessor’s Office and a continuation of our office’s goal of offering new technologies to the public we serve.”
TAXscribe created its system to assist both taxpayers and local governments with the reporting and processing of asset listings that must be turned in annually to assessors, added Longman.
For a number of years, TAXscribe has been working in other states to provide this technology and recently got approved in Louisiana to offer this service, Longman said.
St. Mary is currently one of only five parishes in Louisiana to sign on to the new technology.
“The main reason our office felt it important to offer this service of having a ‘one-stop shop’ for taxpayers to file reports along with the ability to store their information from year to year,” said Longman.
By going to the new and improved www.smpassessor.net and clicking on the “Online LAT 5 Reporting” link, businesses and/or their representatives will be directed to St. Mary Parish’s unique TAXscribe page. Once there, a user can create an account and search for the business filing they wish to report on for the current tax year.
Once a filing is started, step-by-step instructions take the user through the entire process of reporting inventory, furniture and fixtures, machinery and equipment, and any leasehold improvements within the business. There is also a feature that allows files such as depreciation schedules and spreadsheets to be uploaded and attached to the report.
Another important aspect of TAXscribe allows one user to file reports for multiple businesses, a feature designed in part to assist tax professionals with their filings.
“Many businesses are represented by CPAs who fill out their forms every year. With the volume of accounts they have, the hope is that TAXscribe can make their lives a bit easier by streamlining and creating efficiencies in the reporting process,” added Longman.
Assessor Longman notes that filing by mail with the forms supplied by the Assessor’s office is still an acceptable method of reporting. TAXscribe is simply offered as another way to report assets to the parish for those who choose.
The Assessor’s Office hopes that as more and more businesses get introduced to TAXscribe, its benefits will become evident.
Longman concluded, “So much of what we do now is online. TAXscribe is an attempt to follow this trend and modernized the way we report and process business personal property in Louisiana and nationwide.”