Texas Man Arrested After Attempt To Pay Taxes With Dollar Bills
A Wichita Falls man made news last week when he was arrested while trying to pay his property taxes.
Only there’s a little bit more to the story than that. The 27-year old Texan, Timothy Andrew Norris, arrived in person at the Wichita County Courthouse to pay his $600 property tax with individual dollar bills – only there was a twist. Or, er, a fold. Norris had allegedly folded each bill so tightly that it “required tax office personnel approximately six minutes to unfold each bill.”
If you’re doing the math, that means that it would take 3,600 minutes – or 60 hours, longer than a work week – to unfold the bills.
Tax Assessor Collector Tommy Smyth said that the spectacle brought work in the office to a halt so he asked Norris to leave. Norris refused and was eventually arrested and charged with criminal trespass. As you can imagine, Norris was none too happy about being arrested and attempted to break away from the arresting officer, earning him an additional charge of resisting arrest.
Norris might have been agitated because he was cutting it a bit close. According to the “official online window on state government service from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts,” most counties and/or municipalities usually mail their tax bills in October. The final deadline for payment is generally February 1, after which a payment is considered delinquent. Norris arrived at the courthouse before the delinquency date – on January 28 – to pay his taxes which means that he was still on time.
