Jackson County extends month-long grace period for property tax payment
Update: As of Jan. 9, the county’s online tax payment portal has also reopened through the end of the month.
After a series of delays in the billing cycle for 2025 Jackson County property taxes, residents will now have several more weeks to get their payments out.
Interim Jackson County Executive Phil LeVota announced Friday that residents will be able to submit 2025 property tax payments through Jan. 31. The previous deadline was Dec. 31, which is the standard payment deadline for property taxes in Missouri.
New payments will be accepted in person at the Truman Courthouse in Independence — 112 W. Lexington Avenue, Suite 114 — through January 30. They can also be sent to the Truman Courthouse by mail as long as they are postmarked on or before Jan. 31.
The county’s online payment system, which closed before midnight on Dec. 31, will not reopen, LeVota said.
Jackson County tax bills are usually mailed to residents by mid-November. However, the 2025 distribution of nearly 480,000 bills was not completed until Dec. 15, with some residents still missing their bills by the previous Dec. 31 deadline.
Some residents also received obsolete tax bills or were left waiting for corrected tax bills as county staff manually re-adjusted the assessed value of about 6,200 commercial properties. Impacted property found out by December 31 if their values would be lowered, but did not necessarily receive their new reduced bill by the original payment deadline.
LeVota previously advised these residents to “estimate” their new bill in order to submit some form of payment on time.
The payment extension only covers 2025 taxes, LeVota said. Unpaid property taxes from 2024 or any other prior year are still considered overdue.
LeVota previously attributed the delayed bills to complications with the county’s contract with its bill printing vendor, a new provider previously utilized by Clay County for the same purpose. He said Friday that the county’s contract with its previous vendor had timed out during the six-month freeze in the approval of the county’s 2025 budget.
“This transition required a new bill format, new software, and waiting behind counties with established relationships, all of which added time to the process,” LeVota said Friday.
He also previously said that the county is considering implementing additional penalties for residents who are delinquent on their 2025 tax bills, meaning those who don’t make any kind of payment.
Meanwhile, residents who are in the process of appealing their 2025 property tax valuations are still expected to pay their taxes in order to avoid late fees and penalties.
When doing so, residents should write “paid under protest” somewhere on their form of payment, and should enclose a brief written statement restating the reasons for their appeal.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 5:52 AM.
