Frequently Asked Questions

When your Real Estate taxes are escrowed as part of your mortgage, your lender will retrieve your tax information directly from the Town. If you have questions as to whether or not a lender will me making a tax payment on your behalf, you should contact your lending institution or mortgage service provider directly. Effective July 2025, the Tax Collector's Office will send out hard-copy tax bills to all taxpayers. If your taxes are paid as part of escrow, your lender will continue to self-retrieve your tax information; the printed bill is being sent to you as a reference for your convenience. 

Real Estate taxes are assessed to the owner of record as of December 31st of each year for the current calendar year. As a result, the hard copy of the tax roll will always display, in printed form, the owner of record as of December 31^st of the prior year, regardless of changes in ownership. Although your name may not be printed on the hard copy of your property’s current tax bill, your new ownership has been recorded accordingly in all property databases, and will be reflected in the printing of the upcoming tax roll.

You can view the ownership record on your property using the Assessor’s Database. 

Any effective grace period is established in the annual Tax Resolution, as enacted by the Town Council.

The 2025 Tax Resolutions state, in part:

“If the first installment or any succeeding installment of taxes is not paid prior to the first (1st) day of the next calendar month following the last date of the respective installment period or periods as they occur, then the whole tax or remaining unpaid balance of the tax as the case may be, shall immediately become due and payable and shall carry until collected a penalty at the rate of twelve percent (12%) per annum from August 1, 2025 for real and personal property taxes, and motor vehicle excise tax as allowed by the laws of the State of Rhode Island.  Upon payment of any and all delinquent quarterly installments together with interest accrued on the full unpaid balance of the tax, the right to pay the remaining taxes on the installment basis will be reinstated.”

To view the full 2025 Tax Resolutions, click here. 

Quarter 1 – Due August 1 (Delinquent after August 31)

Quarter 2 – Due November 1 (Delinquent after November 30)

Quarter 3 – Due February 1 (Delinquent after February 28)

Quarter 4 – Due May 1 (Delinquent after May 31) 

A late notice is generated in an automation if any tax or sewer payment installment is past-due after the conclusion of a grace period. Once an installment is past-due and an account transitions into a delinquent status, the full remaining balance on the account is listed as due on any late notice correspondence. If you believe that you have received a late notice in error, please do not ignore the notice – we strongly encourage you to contact the Tax Collector’s office for assistance. 

If you choose to mail a payment, the Tax Collector’s office will honor a postmark in consideration of timeliness. The postmark must be from the United States postal service; we will not honor the purchase-date of self-applied postage. If you intend to mail payment and you are concerned about meeting a deadline, we encourage you to bring your envelope to the post office and have the envelope postmarked in-person; if you leave an envelope in your local mailbox, there is no guarantee that the post office will stamp the postmark in same-day processing. 

The Tax Collector’s office can accept Real Estate, Motor Vehicle, Tangible taxes, and utility payments via credit or debit card. Taxpayers have the option to pay their tax bills by major credit card (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover), or by debit card with the Visa or MasterCard logo.

Card-based payments may be made in-person or online. Online transactions require the payee to know the unique correlating account number for a given account, information which is located at the top of the every tax bill and utility bill. To pay online, please click here. 

Many merchants accepting credit or debit cards are willing to pay the fees charged by credit card companies in order to provide that service to its customers. As a municipality, we do not have the option of paying those fees since we must collect the full amount of the tax bill. Therefore, when a taxpayer uses a credit card, the fees must be charged over and above the amount of the bill being paid.

A convenience fee is charged for processing each debit or credit card transaction as payment to a third party credit card processing service provider for accepting and processing the payment. The fee also covers the cost of the operation of a system for accepting card-based payments. This convenience fee is charged directly to the taxpayer as a separate charge on their cardholder statement. The fee amounts to 3% of the payment amount or a minimum of $2.00. No part of the convenience fee is paid to the Town of South Kingstown. 

The 2025 Real Estate (both residential and commercial) tax rate is $8.94 per thousand of assessed value, and the Tangible/Personal Property tax rate is $11.05 per thousand of assessed value.

Retail and Wholesale Inventory is exempt from assessment as of December 31, 2006.