NATCHEZ — Adams County Tax Collector Peter Burns has a problem. It’s four inches tall, and it keeps growing.

It’s a stack of postcards for mobile home taxes that are delinquent.

Burns told the Adams County Board of Supervisors Tuesday that the tax collection office is going to be more aggressive in collecting mobile home taxes. While the decision isn’t final, Burns said his office is considering using the county’s collection agency — which would collect the taxes with penalties included as well as tack on an additional fee — to get what is owed.

“It is unfair, tax-wise, for others to pay properly and for others to think they can slide by with no recourse and no problem,” Burns said after the meeting.

Mobile homes can be taxed one of two ways.

If the homeowner owns the land on which the home is situated, they can link the structure with the land and claim homestead. Once that is done, the home and the land together go on the county’s real estate rolls.

If the homeowner does not own the land on which the mobile home is situated, they are taxed individually for the mobile home once a year. Burns said the tax operates similar to the automobile tax.

If a mobile home owner has attached the home to a property, and if they are delinquent, Burns said the county can have a land sale.

“If they just own the mobile home roll, we send a statement, they come in and they pay or they don’t pay,” Burns said. “Mobile homes are mobile, sometimes they will move them somewhere else, sometimes they sell them and they are gone, and if they don’t come into our office and inform us of that, then they are on the roll.”

The problem with mobile homes that are no longer in the county but are still on the rolls is that they distort local millages, Burns said.

“These values are on the rolls, so when the county or the school district set their mills they are expecting these funds,” Burns said.

“They determine how many mills they need to go against these values to come up with the available funds.”

County Administrator Joe Murray said it is the responsibility of the homeowners to notify the county if they have moved their mobile home so it is no longer taxed.

“We don’t have the resources to go from year-to-year to go through these stacks (of paper) and verify addresses,” he said.

Most mobile home taxes are very small, Burns said but it’s still important for homeowners to pay their fair share.

The tax collector also said that to a lesser degree the county has had problems collecting personal property taxes, the taxes on the inventory, furniture and fixtures in a business.

Burns said that by law he cannot forgive penalties and fees associated with late taxes.