KSHB 41 reporter Lily O’Shea Becker covers Franklin and Douglas counties in Kansas. Lily reached out to Clay County officials to get the tax deadline extension story after a viewer's tip. Share your story idea with Lily.
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Clay County extended the deadline for all real estate and personal property tax payments from Dec. 31 to Jan. 30, 2026, on Monday.
Monday morning, Clay County extended the deadline for the county's senior Real Estate Property Tax Relief program, which freezes real estate property taxes for seniors. By Monday afternoon, the county decided to extend the deadline for all residents.
“The thought occurred to us, that making it a uniform deadline — it simplified and eliminated some of the confusion," Clay County commissioner Jerry Nolte said.
Clay County taxes are typically mailed to residents by mid-November and are due on Dec. 31.
As of Monday morning, Clay County resident Kathy Weir said she still had not received hers. She said her online balance did not reflect the prepayments she made on her property tax bill.
She said she waited in line at the Clay County Collector's office for over an hour Monday morning to figure out how much she owes after her prepayments.
“I hope they get their act together because they did not seem to have it together this year," she said.
It's the first year Clay County has implemented the senior tax relief program.
“Whenever you implement a new program, you’re always going to have some new issues come up," Nolte said.
Nolte said a software issue caused the delays for the program.
“Now that we have seen where some of those issues are, we can correct them, not just this year, but going forward," he said.
Clay County resident Diane Gardner said she received the tax bill right before Christmas.
“Personally, we were billed for the wrong house," she said. "We bought and sold a house this year, so I noticed the tax was on the wrong house.”
While some residents stopped by the collector's office to make payments — online payment options were not available — on Monday, others had questions they needed answered.
“We also prepaid some of our property taxes so we’d have to pay less now, but I don’t see the prepayments reflected on the property tax bill," Clay County resident Lucy Kephart said.
Nolte said the county is looking at ways to implement online payment options moving forward.
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