County Tells Tax Collection Company to Halt Business

Things were going great for Indiana-based U.S. Research, a collection agency specializing in collecting overdue property taxes. That is until it turned out they weren?t necessarily licensed in the state of Indiana to collect property taxes.

Oops.

According to a story running on the Northwest Indiana-Times, U.S. Research faces allegations the firm hasn’t been following state law requiring collection agencies to be licensed by the Indiana secretary of state and to have posted a $5,000 bond to ensure none of the money goes missing.

Lake County Treasurer John Petalas said Monday that U.S. Research collected $5.4 million in delinquent taxes last year. The county paid U.S. Research more than $1 million in collection fees.

Failure to comply with the licensing and bonding could result in a court order to shut down operations, as well as a filing of a Class B misdemeanor.

You can read more about this story at County tells tax collection company to halt business.