We have made some changes to the Tax Kiosk to assist municipalities that utilize the Paperless Notification configuration. Going forward, you will receive undeliverable email notifications (aka “bounce backs”) when Paperless Notification emails fail to reach their recipients. Once you are notified of undeliverable email you can generate and mail a traditional paper invoice to ensure the taxpayer receives a bill.

First, a bit of background. In municipalities that have upgraded to the Comprehensive Tax Kiosk Configuration, when taxpayers pay their bills online they are offered the opportunity to receive future tax bill notifications by email. They get a confirmation email from the Tax Kiosk and if they reply, instead of receiving traditional printed tax bills, going forward they receive at least one, but up to three, emails alerting them that their bills are available online.

• The first email is sent by the Tax Kiosk once you’ve uploaded new bills to your Tax Kiosk.
• A second email is sent automatically by the Tax Kiosk 15 days prior to the due date if the outstanding balance is not zero.
• A third/final email is sent three days prior to the due date if the outstanding balance is not zero.

Ideally, when taxpayers receive Paperless Notifications, they click on the link within the emails to view their bills on the Tax Kiosk, and they pay their bills. However, now that several of you have been using the Paperless Notification option for several billing cycles, we’re starting occasionally to see bounced email from taxpayers that changed their email addresses since they first enrolled and neglected to modify their Paperless Notification preferences. Unfortunately, when taxpayers that opted in for Paperless Notification do not receive email notifications due to an invalid email address or a failure by their email server, they are not receiving any other notices of outstanding taxes because when they opt in for Paperless Notification the Tax Collect system no longer prints paper invoices for them.

Previously, the Tax Kiosk did not provide undeliverable email notifications to you. Emails that were undeliverable to the recipient bounced back to the Tax Kiosk and no further action occurred (similar to the USPS dead letter office where no forwarding or return address is available). Now, instead, undeliverable emails will be bounced back directly to you. As such, you may begin to see undeliverable emails in your inbox that (depending on your email client) may look something like this:

From: **YOUR EMAIL**
Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 9:21 AM
Subject: Delivery Failure
To: **TAXPAYER'S EMAIL ADDRESS**

Could not deliver message to the following recipient(s):

Failed Recipient: **TAXPAYER'S EMAIL ADDRESS**
Reason: Remote host said: 550 No such 
user (**TAXPAYER'S EMAIL ADDRESS**)

-- The header and top 20 lines of the message follows --

Received: from **** (comcastbusiness.net) 
by relay.mxout.managed.com with SMTP;
Thu, 4 Jun 2015 08:20:30 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: **YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS**
To: **TAXPAYER'S EMAIL ADDRESS**
Date: 4 June 2015 09:20:32 -0400
Subject: Notice: Your Tax Bill is Available Online

The notification of an undeliverable email could include a reason similar to the following:

• Could not deliver message to the following recipient(s): taxpayersemail@abandoneddomain.com
• Failed Recipient: taxpayersemail@abandoneddomain.com
• Reason: Remote host said: 550 No such user taxpayersemail@abandoneddomain.com

Upon notification of the undeliverable email there are two steps you should implement as a standard procedure:

1. You should update the delivery method for future tax bills by reverting to the traditional printed delivery method for the parcels associated with the failed email address. To change from paperless to printed notification you begin in Avitar Tax Collect by identifying the parcels associated with the failed email address. To do so, select Reports | Parcels… | Kiosk Settings… | Paperless Parcels. By Searching the Paperless Parcels report (click on the magnifying glass icon on the report preview toolbar and enter the email address) you can identify the parcel(s) associated with the email address. Then simply search for the parcel(s) and select an invoice. Once you have selected an invoice, from the main menu, select Edit Invoices | Internet Kiosk Settings | Paperless/Email Settings. To remove the settings from paperless notification uncheck the Provide This Parcel’s Invoices Paperlessly check box.
2. Once the changes for future delivery are complete the customer still needs to be notified of the current billing so you will need to generate a printed tax bill.  But, lucky for you, as part of the Comprehensive Tax Kiosk Configuration you’ve also got PDFs for each bill on your Tax Kiosk.  Just locate the parcel on your Tax Kiosk and print the PDF of the original bill for the corresponding invoice(s) to send by mail to ensure the taxpayer receives a bill.