As I made out checks last week for my property taxes and my water and sewer fees, it occurred to me that this was really very retro. The checkbook. Finding an envelope. Needing a stamp.

I am no stranger to e-commerce. I bought my coffee table from a dot-com boomer biz that soon disappeared in the dot-com bust. I have transferred money via every convoluted machination eBay sellers have dreamed up over the years. Amazon is my everything mall. Do I do on-line banking? You bet your bippy I do.

So why am I still paying my town taxes with a feather quill and ink pot?

My rueful and chagrined answer: because I didn’t know how to pay them on-line. Worse, I was apparently too lazy to find out.

Ahh, but now I have spent my last stamp and envelope in the service of Amherst taxation.

First I talked to Town Collector Claire McGinnis, for a little background on the on-line payment system. She said that it was launched in December of 2005, and that seven to ten taxpayers use it for bill paying each week. It was “implemented by popular demand,” she said, as a service offered for the convenience of residents. It was not intended to save departmental time or money, nor has it done so, because she says that there is still processing to do, crediting payments to accounts.

McGinnis said that at a certain volume, it could be a time-saver, but that would be something much higher than the current usage. By comparison, she said that her office processes some 50,000 pieces of mail each year. That doesn’t even include parking tickets which currently can’t be paid on-line, and account for another 20,000 pieces.

“It is time consuming to open the mail and collate the checks,” she said.

The on-line system itself doesn’t cost the town any money, said McGinnis, explaining that it is run by Unibank, in exchange for the town depositing some of its funds in that bank. Banks profit from deposited funds, so that is Unibank’s “payment” for providing the service.

So is there a fee for individuals using it to pay their taxes?

Those opting to pay by credit card incur a fee, McGinnis said, “on a graduated scale, based on the dollar value of the payment.” She said the fee is around $30 per thousand.

The other on-line payment option is called ACH, or Automated Clearing House, which is an authorization by the user to transfer funds from his checking account to the town. There is no fee for that option.

McGinnis said that one point of confusion some people have with the on-line payment system is the issue of the tax year. The town’s fiscal year begins July 1st, so the current tax/fiscal year is 2007.

Another payment option the town offers is a Direct Debit plan that has been around much longer and is not considered part of the on-line payment system. With that, users fill out a form (available on the town’s website) that allows the town to withdraw your billing amount from your bank account on the due date, on a recurring basis. Once you set up the plan, you still receive your bill, so you know how much will be debited and when, but you never need to take any further action to pay town bills. McGinnis said that compared to the online options, the usage for direct debit program is “much higher – probably 300 people are signed up.”

I asked what the difference is between using the town’s on-line system and simply paying the town through my bank’s on-line banking system. McGinnis said the difference on the receiving end is significant.

“It is an electronic transaction for the user, but the bank still sends a hard copy of the payment to the Collector’s office, and with no remittance copy of the bill,” she said.

Without that remittance copy, and all its important information such as bill number, account number and parcel ID number, it is difficult to match the payment with the account. That is further complicated by the fact that many people have multiple accounts with the town – property tax, water bills, excise tax, and so forth, and multiples of those for anyone who owns more than one property. While regular on-line banking systems don’t typically incorporate all those details, the town’s on-line payment system does.

Thoroughly prepared, it was time to test drive the system. Mind you, I couldn’t complete the process because I had already paid the old fashioned way last week, but I could give it a whirl.

I started at the home page of the town’s web site, and clicked on the link in the “popular destinations” section that said: Pay Your Town of Amherst Bills Online. That took me here:

www.amherstma.gov/departments/Collector_-_Treasurer/payment.asp

The page is called “Payment Options.” Under the “Online” option, the first sentence says: “Payment by ACH or credit card is possible through our secure online banking partner.”

This is not the most user-friendly intro. As I mentioned, I’m no web newbie, and I didn’t even know what ACH meant until I spoke with Claire McGinnis. Even if you knew that ACH stood for Automated Clearing House, would you know what that meant? Not exactly self-explanatory. But I soldier on.

Below the intro paragraph are links for paying four different types of bills: Real Estate, Personal Property, Excise, and Water and Sewer. Clicking on any of them takes you to a secure page that says “UniPay Online Payment Center” below the town’s web banner.

There are four entry fields per category, two of which have drop down menus, from which you select your choice, and two require you to enter data. Depending which link you had clicked from the Town Collector’s page, the info on the UniPay page should have the relevant info showing. For example, if you had clicked on Real Estate, the data fields should say:

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Activity: Real Estate Amherst

Bill Number: blank

Parcel ID: blank

If you had clicked on Water and Sewer, the fields on the UniPay page should say:

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Activity: Water/Sewer Amherst

Bill Number: blank

Tax Year: 2007

And so forth, for each category.

For the Water and Sewer option and the Excise option, that works as it should, making it very clear how to proceed.

But clicking on the Real Estate and Personal Property options both bring up the following fields on the UniPay screen:

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Activity: Select Activity

Primary ID: blank

Secondary ID: blank

If you are exploring the possibilities of using this system, you might well be put off by this. Primary ID? Secondary ID? Even selecting your “Activity” isn’t terribly obvious.

But the key is exactly that: Select your activity. Clicking on the drop down box in that field provides a list of the four kinds of bills you can pay there, and choosing “Real Estate Amherst” updates the fields to Bill Number and Parcel ID, instead of the inscrutable Primary and Secondary IDs. Choosing any of the different “activity” options updates the other data fields accordingly.

In order to proceed, you need your tax bill handy in order to fill in the required information on the screen. After inputting the bill number and parcel ID, and clicking “continue,” it brings up a screen called “Customer information,” which lists the Owner Name, Property Address and Tax Year. All of these fields were filled in correctly on mine, requiring me to do nothing. There are optional blank fields at the bottom for e-mail addresses. I left them blank, and hit “continue.”

This brings up a screen called “payment method,” and it lists the following fields:

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Amount

Fee

Total

Payer Name

Bank Routing #

Account #

Amount

It appears to default to the ACH option, though that term isn’t used. Here, it is called “Electronic payment from checking,” and that is the option showing in the Payment Method field, which is another dropdown menu.

And yes, it lists “amount” twice. While the system fills in all the relevant amounts associated with your account, if you were to change the number in the top “amount” field – perhaps if you were making a partial payment – that would then automatically change the figures in the “total” field and the final “amount” field.

If your information is correct and you are paying the full amount owed, then the only fields you need to fill in here are those for “Bank Routing #” and “Bank Account #”. This could be another mysterious question, but the page has a helpful graphic of the bottom of a check, identifying which numbers are which.

You’ll notice that with this “Electronic Payment from Checking” option, the field for “fee” is blank. Below that, it notes that “If using credit card, fee is assessed by the credit card service provider.” Not sure why it says that on this page, but it is a good segue for looking at the Credit Card payment option.

Clicking the dropdown on the Payment Method field reveals two additional options: Mastercard and Discover. What about Visa? A quick call to the “support line” phone number – 256-4020 – helpfully included at the bottom of every page, put me in touch with the Town Collector’s Office, and they said that Visa is accepted also. Why doesn’t it say that on the screen? I have no idea.

Choosing either the Mastercard or Discover option brings up identical screens, both listing the following:

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Fee

Total

First Name

Last Name

Credit Card Nbr

Security Code (CVV#)

Address

City

State

Postal code

The first three of these fields are filled in with your relevant account figures, including the “fee” field. For my bill, the fee came up as $35, which puts it in line with the $30 per thousand figure Claire McGinnis had mentioned.

The only non-obvious field (except for postal code – hello? We call it a zip code in our land.) is the “Security code (CVV#)” Again, a helpful graphic displays the back of a credit card, indicating where the number is that they want. However, on the graphic, it uses a different name than the field, calling it instead the “Card ID.” The explanatory text below that image states: “The security code is a three or four digit number located on the front or back of the card.” And just what a “CVV#” is, we’ll never know.

It’s hard for me to imagine why paying a hefty credit card fee would be an attractive option, but to each his own.

Having already paid my bill by check a few days before exploring this, this screen was as far as I could go through the process, without sending an additional tax payment. Now that I know how the system works, I will be paying my Town taxes on-line in the future.

-- Stephanie O’Keeffe