By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

Georgia’s new motor vehicle tax rules kicked in on Friday and the Dade County Tax Commissioner’s office was clearly ready to catch grief about it. 

“Due to House Bill 386, you may experience longer wait times when you come into the office,” read a sign on the door. “Please be patient, because our staff is doing all they can with limited resources.”

And just inside the tax office, Deputy John “Japi” Lynch was on guard, deployed from the Dade County Sheriff’s Department to keep the peace. 

“It’s not for protests,” assured Deputy Tax Commissioner Angie Galloway. “It’s just so that somebody don’t get nasty ugly. That does happen in here from time to time.”

But on Friday, both the deputy commissioner and the sheriff’s deputy agreed that nobody had degenerated to the nasty-ugly stage, though Ms. Galloway indicated a few taxpayers might have been achieved a minor miff level. “We’ve had three or four customers that have had to pay a fee, and some of them have had to leave and go and get money and come back,” she reported.

However, traffic had been low and no voices had been raised, said Ms. Galloway. As for Deputy Lynch, he opined that on the whole, guarding the tax office had been minimally less eventful than his usual gig, manning the security checkpoint at the Dade courts building. 

“It’s been peaceful so far,” said Lynch, sitting behind a table armed with hunting magazines against the slow times.

Georgia’s new tax law eliminates the yearly ad valorem “birthday” tax on cars in favor of a one-time “title” tax, and is forecast to save auto owners money if they hold on to their cars for a number of years.

But it also charges the title tax on the fair market value rather than sales price, if FMV is higher, of used cars that change hands in casual sales, which is something new. And tax offices across the state have steeled themselves for the reality that if taxpayers hate anything worse than taxes, it’s change of any kind.

“The last two weeks, we’ve done I think three times the amount of titles, so I think that most people that were aware of it got in here before today’s date,” said Ms. Galloway. “If you had come in yesterday, they were lined up to the Coke machine. Most everybody that knew about the law got in here to get their paperwork done.” 

She said many taxpayers seemed to have actually made their car purchases in February to avoid falling under the new rules by waiting for March. “A lot of people, I think, were getting tax refunds and buying with that,” she said.  “But we had a much heavier month in titles for February. It set a record.”

Ms. Galloway said the tax office did not forecast requiring the services of a sheriff’s deputy routinely in the future, though it may request extra security from time to time during expected peak periods.