Terms of Sale

Modified 2023

 

 

1.    The Tax Sale of unpaid 2022 real property taxes will begin on May 31, 2023. The sale will be conducted on the tax sale auction web site linked from the www.LevyTax.org home page.

 

 2.   Caution: This is not a sale of real property. It is a lien for the amount of delinquent taxes plus interest and fees. You are not bidding on tax certificates. You are bidding on the right to pay delinquent taxes. If you are awarded the right to do so through the auction and actually pay the taxes, then the tax office will issue a tax certificate to you. No tax certificate exists until it is issued by the tax office. Contact with property owners initiated by certificate owners to encourage payment at any time within the 1st 2 years of delinquency is prohibited. Contact or behavior of a certificate holder deemed unfair or deceptive may result in criminal prosecution. A tax deed application is the proper and legal method to compel payment.

 

3.    To be eligible to bid, you must complete the following steps from the Levy Tax Sale link located on the www.LevyTax.org home page:

a)  Read, understand and agree to abide by the Terms of Sale which includes the Participating Bidder Agreement.

b)  Complete online registration.

c)  Receive bidder number assignment.

d)  Complete IRS Form W-9.  No foreign entity bidders are allowed.

A social security number or tax identification number must be provided for each buyer and must belong to the person or entity listed on the W-9 form. The tax certificate list, redemption checks and 1099 interest earnings will be issued exactly as indicated on your W-9 form. Office policy dictates that on a calendar year, each bidder must resubmit their W-9 information. Failure to do so will exclude you from the tax sale. Until the tax sale is complete, no changes will be made to the bidder number issued. A change of name or tax identification number will constitute a reassignment and is subject to service charge for each certificate changed.

 

4.    Bidders must set their maximum award limit. Failure to set this limit will result in zero bids being awarded. This spending limit can be found on the bidder maintenance screen as field “Maximum Award Amount Limit “.  The entry you make will set the total amount of your desired investment.
You are responsible for setting this limit.

 

5.    The bidding begins at 18% (the maximum rate) and is bid down in quarter percent increments. A “zero” interest bid will award the bidder the item with NO interest. When your bid is recognized as the low bid on the Results Page, you are obligated to pay for the item even if the bid was unintentional.

 

6.    The items will be auctioned in the order listed in the newspaper. The delinquent taxes from prior years follow the list of current year delinquent properties. Some items listed in the newspaper and on the Web site will not be auctioned due to payments being received after the list was prepared for publication.

 

7.    The Levy County Tax Collector has the responsibility to administer the tax certificate sale and is charged to hold the sale in a fair and equitable manner.  Only the Tax Collector or his designee may conduct and control the sale.  The Tax Collector shall not allow bidders to control or attempt to obstruct the sale or interfere with its conduct. The “Tax Certificate Sale Guidelines and Procedures” published by the Florida Department of Revenue are to be followed.  These guidelines and procedures define “bidders” and “agents”.  Section 12 specifically provides:

“12.  Rotational Bidding:  Rotational Bidding is a violation of the law.  Rotational bidding means any system, procedure or behavior, established or encouraged or allowed to be established or encouraged, whereby two or more bidders at the sale or any bidder together with the tax collector, prevent or attempt to prevent free, open and competitive bidding on each and every tax sale certificate.”

“If a tax collector observes any type of rotational bidding, the tax collector should take whatever measures are necessary to prevent the occurrence or continuance of rotational bidding.  These measures may include removing a bidder who attempts to disrupt a sale.”

In the event that the Levy County Tax Collector or his designee observes any type of rotational bidding, by any agent of multiple bidders or by individual bidders that bid in a manner to prevent a free and open competitive auction, the bid(s) shall be disallowed.  Specifically, should an agent provide bids for tax certificate sale items that are identical or substantially similar so as to provide an advantage, these bids shall be deemed to prevent or attempt to prevent free, open and competitive bidding.

The Levy County Tax Collector has provided a mechanism for bidders to manually enter bids or to submit bids electronically.  Any automated program used to access the auction shall be deemed as an attempt to prevent free, open and competitive bidding.  Should the Tax Collector or his designee observe the use of an automated program during the tax certificate sale, the offending bidder(s) may be removed from the tax certificate sale and deposits may be forfeited.  Any bidders deemed as attempting to prevent free, open and competitive bidding during a tax certificate sale shall be contacted by the Levy County Tax Collector or his designee regarding their exclusion from the sale and/or deposit forfeiture.

 

8.    After the sale has completed, final payment must be submitted/authorized by the date and time specified in the Calendar of Events on the sale site via ACH Debit on the Payments Page of the tax sale web site. The Tax Collector’s Office shall issue tax certificates once your money has been received and the delinquent taxes have been paid. A list of the properties for which you will be issued a tax certificate is provided to each successful bidder. Award lists of successful bids are provided on the website but are subject to changes during processing by the tax office. A bidder failing to make payment in the specified time will forfeit their awarded certificates.  Additionally, this may be considered a disruption of the sale and they may be banned from participation in future sales.

 

9.    The Tax Collector reserves the right to cancel or correct certificates issued in error. Interest payments may be affected by bankruptcies, U.S. Marshal Seizures, property taken over by a receivership, etc.

 

10.   The submission of mass bid files must be completed by the specified date and time in the Calendar of Events on the tax sale site. This will ensure that your bids are properly recorded and will allow for assistance should you encounter problems. Imported files are not allowed following this cutoff date and time.

11.   As part of our efforts to provide a sale that addresses the needs of Taxpayers, Taxing Authorities and Tax Certificate Investors, we have decided to follow a policy developed by the Florida Tax Collector Inc., and suspend the use of sub-accounts for the Tax Certificate Sale. We feel this policy is necessary in order to ensure the integrity and fairness of the registration and bidding process at the Tax Certificate Sale.

 

12.  The County Internet Tax Sale Site displays the date and time as a field in the right top side of each page when a response has been provided to the user based on their selections. This date and time is only an indicator to the user of when the response has been displayed to them. The date and time displayed is provided by the web servers that communicate back and forth to the user. This date and time is used in conjunction with parameters set by the county to provide a timeout mechanism to automatically logout a user after a specified time interval. This displayed date and time does not provide a centralized time indication or an official auction clock time as the auction process is performed on the county application servers and there is no time synchronization between these servers. The actual start of awards is based on county server function and their clocks and not through any web services. Therefore, any user of this site agrees that in no fashion will the displayed date and time indicate the time that awards start or stop.

 

13.   Agreement to the Terms of Sale includes the acknowledgement by the user that they have read and accepted the terms and conditions defined in the disclaimer and privacy policy for this web site located in the “Disclaimer” link.