St. Louis County blames software glitch for senior tax freeze errors on online bills

MAPLEWOOD, Mo. (First Alert 4) - St. Louis County property tax bills posted online this week show increases for homeowners enrolled in the Senior Property Tax Freeze, and county officials said a software glitch caused the errors.

The county has received calls from homeowners who saw that the freeze was not applied to their bills. More than 70,000 homeowners have qualified for the freeze.

Amby Stevenson, 75, has lived in her Maplewood home for 36 years. She went online recently to check her 2026 property tax bill.

Her property taxes increased by $1,950 this year, even though she signed up online for the St. Louis County Senior Property Tax Freeze for two years.

“How am I going to pay it because I definitely don’t have an extra $2,000 laying around. I’m on a fixed income, I’m retired,” Stevenson said.

Elizabeth Eisele, a spokesperson for St. Louis County, said the county has received calls about the bills.

“Yes, we’ve received quite a few phone calls from folks who are seeing that their senior tax freeze was not applied to their bill,” Eisele said.

Eisele said the online bills are inaccurate.

“We are seeing some glitches with some software that didn’t apply the right base year for those folks. So, we are working on fixing that, will be a couple of days. It only affects the bill that shows up online,” Eisele said.

Eisele said homeowners will receive a paper tax bill in the mail in the next couple of weeks. She said it will show the correct property tax amount. She said the online bills should be corrected sometime next week.

Some homeowners will see a higher tax bill because they missed the June 30 deadline to get the tax freeze for 2026.

“You did not need to resubmit any information, you just needed to check the box that this is still your primary address,” Eisele said.

The period to sign up for the 2027 tax freeze opens Nov. 1 for anyone who qualifies.