Baltimore's Finance Department mailed 50,123 notices in October demanding payment on outstanding bills, totaling $504.6 million across the city — and plenty of residents say the numbers on their letters made no sense at all. Some were asked to pay charges dating back more than a decade, including one woman billed just 53 cents from a decade-old tax year.
Decade-Old Charges Blindside Longtime Residents
Ellen Townsend's notice listed $40.35 from the 2013–14 tax year and 53 cents from 2015–16, according to WMAR-2 News. Townsend said she paid her property tax bill in full and had no idea where the alleged balance came from. Tywanna Gardner, meanwhile, received a notice seeking $1,299.36. Both women maintained they had already paid their property taxes in full.
The city's Bureau of Revenue Collections sends letters every October to notify residents about outstanding bills tied to a property that could eventually lead to a tax sale, the Finance Department said, per the same report. The letters are meant to help resolve outstanding bills and flag possibly incorrect balances. In the past, those October letters only covered past-year real property taxes and current or past-year special-benefit bills — but system updates now let the bureau pull in balances from multiple years across far more categories of bills, the department said.
What's Actually Included in the $504.6 Million
This year's notices covered real property taxes, water bills, part-year bills, special benefits, alley and footway charges, environmental citations, miscellaneous bills and parking citations. Real property bills alone accounted for $171.7 million, while municipal water bills totaled $164.2 million and miscellaneous charges added up to $104.7 million. Environmental citations made up $55.0 million, parking citations $2.8 million, special benefit bills $4.6 million, and alley and footway charges $1.6 million, the station's report notes.
The balances represent amounts carried forward from earlier billing periods rather than new charges, and may include prior-year balances along with late fees, penalties or other add-ons. Unpaid water bills remain liens against properties, though unpaid water bills alone do not make a property eligible for tax sale.
How To Check If a Notice Is Accurate
Steven Kappen, tangled title project manager with Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, said one of his clients initially wondered whether their notice was even a scam. His organization verified the charges on that client's notice by cross-referencing information the client already had — but that single check does not establish whether other residents' balances are accurate, the outlet reported.
Kappen recommends checking older alleged property-tax balances against receipts and payment history, and said it's possible to verify charges even if some receipts have been lost. He cautioned that some notice descriptions aren't much help: a charge listed only as “miscellaneous,” he said, “isn't very helpful” for figuring out what it's actually for. He also noted a notice might simply reflect a balance a resident is already working to resolve, rather than an entirely new bill.
Residents with questions or who spot possible errors can contact the Bureau of Revenue Collections at 410-396-3000. The Finance Department has said it will review disputed bills and abate incorrect charges on a case-by-case basis. Kappen advised starting that process by either paying, contesting, or following up directly with the city, and recommended that residents keep an eye on their property-tax and water accounts, along with any environmental citations tied to the property, going forward.
Confusion Over the October 31 Date
Some homeowners' notices listed an October 31 payment date, but Kappen said that date is separate from the broader tax-sale timeline, which extends into spring. He said the general tax-sale process does not actually operate on an October 31 deadline. WMAR-2 News asked the Finance Department to clarify what the October 31 date means for unpaid or disputed balances — including whether additional charges or collection activity continue while a dispute is under review — along with how residents can request an itemized account history and why some homeowners are only now learning of property-tax balances more than a decade old despite receiving earlier October letters. The Finance Department did not answer those questions, according to the station.
A city lien certificate can provide a broader accounting of charges, but it costs money, and Kappen said he does not recommend residents routinely buy one just to monitor an account when individual records are available for free. He does see a benefit in the notices overall, since they give homeowners a chance to address outstanding charges before selling or transferring a property — even as he acknowledged the anxiety the letters can stir up over potential tax sales.
Part of a Bigger Collections Push
The mass mailing lands amid a broader city effort to chase down unpaid revenue. Baltimore's Department of Finance has recovered $14.5 million in unpaid bills since May, after a city audit found $48 million in uncollected revenue from fiscal years 2023 through 2025, according to WBAL-TV. Of that $14.5 million, just $1.4 million came from new collections, with the remainder from administrative cleanup. City officials said Baltimore has collected 98% of all revenues overall — a rate near the top among cities nationwide — but still needs to collect more than $33.8 million.
That audit, which initially surfaced millions in unpaid bills from customers and contracted businesses in 2023 and 2024, identified more than $4 million in unpaid leases, utilities and conduit payments, WBAL-TV reported separately. In June, the Bureau of Collections sent out 1,100 final bill and legal notices tied to $15 million in unpaid invoices, according to WBAL NewsRadio.
Tax Sale Rules Residents Should Know
Under Baltimore's Tax Sale Deferral Program, homeowners can protect a property from being sold in a tax sale for one year, but the program does not erase unpaid bills, according to the city's Tax Sale Process page. Separately, Baltimore's homeowner tax-sale guidance notes that, beginning in 2020, unpaid water bills no longer count toward the $1,000 tax-sale eligibility threshold for owner-occupied properties, per the Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development.
