Jason Maki is accusing Platte County Collector Sheila Palmer’s office and her attorney of misleading a judge and deliberately mailing 2026 property tax statements without the voter-approved homestead property tax credit before a court could order its implementation.
Palmer disputes that her office has refused to perform its duties.
Her statement sent to The Landmark distinguishes between receiving a tax book and receiving one that includes the homestead credit calculations. According to Palmer, her attorney told the court that a tax book containing those calculations had not been delivered to the collector.
“The tax statements that have been sent out reflect and are based on the tax book that my office had from the County Clerk as of October 31, 2026,” Palmer said.
“I do not and have not refused and will perform the duties required of my office under the homestead property tax credit, as well as any other statute that places mandatory duties upon my office.”
Maki said statements began reaching mailboxes Friday, Nov. 6, without the credit the County Commission ordered applied to more than 20,500 eligible homes. He contends records he obtained through a Sunshine Law request contradict arguments her attorney made during an Oct. 27 hearing.
Maki and James Bosch filed the lawsuit Sept. 29, seeking a court order requiring Palmer to apply the homestead property tax credit to 2026 tax bills. At the time, Maki was the Republican nominee for presiding commissioner and Bosch was the Republican nominee for collector. Both lost in the Nov. 3 election.
Bosch later withdrew from the lawsuit because he cannot receive both the homestead credit and the senior property tax credit established under Senate Bill 190. He chose the senior credit.
At an Oct. 27 hearing, Judge Timothy J. Flook dismissed the case as premature, indicating it needed to be refiled after Nov. 1 and include Platte County and the county clerk because they also have roles in applying the credit.
Maki had not refiled the lawsuit as of The Landmark’s press deadline.
Voters approved the homestead property tax credit April 7 with 79.4% support. The program resets eligible homeowners’ property tax bills to their 2024 levels and limits annual increases to 5% or the rate of inflation, whichever is greater. Palmer previously said the credit would not be applied until 2027 because of delays involving the office’s software vendor.
Maki said the credit would reduce his own tax bill by $253, even though his property’s assessed value did not change this year.
“Families whose values jumped in the 2025 reassessment are owed more, some of them several hundred dollars, some over a thousand. This is not trivial money,” he said.
Maki contends the collector’s office knows the total value of the omitted credits because it reviewed the parcels individually.
“They have never said what they found, because the answer is what they’d owe back,” he said.
Tax book calculations at issue
Maki said records he recently received show Palmer signed for the tax book Oct. 9, three weeks before the hearing. He contends the court dismissed the case as premature based on an inaccurate understanding of when the collector received it.
Palmer’s statement sent to The Landmark also outlined the legal argument presented by her attorney, Lydia McEvoy of Pathguide Law LLC.
According to Palmer, the lawsuit sought to require the collector to calculate the credit, but Flook found that the collector “is not statutorily obligated to ‘note’ an amount for a tax credit unless that credit has been previously calculated and the Clerk has duly charged and delivered the tax book.”
The statement also quoted Flook as finding that the collector “has no duty to calculate a credit amount.”
Palmer’s statement maintains that the collector has no authority to recalculate a tax book charged to her. It cites Section 137.290.1 of Missouri law, which charges the collector with “the whole amount of the tax books delivered,” and Section 137.300, which provides for the county clerk to prepare a supplemental tax book when required by the County Commission. The statement argues that the law does not assign the collector responsibility for calculating or revising tax liability.
“If the county calculates the credit and delivers a supplemental tax book the way the law requires, I will do everything I am supposed to do,” Palmer said. “My intention since the first time I warned the Commission about the possible software concerns was to be part of the solution and get this figured out long before we had to think about mailing tax bills.”
Maki maintains the office’s actions before the hearing support his allegations.
“She had already acted,” Maki said. “They acted to not implement the credit. They acted to deceive the voters. The bills were being printed without the credit, and they knew it. In the process they deceived the court and lied to the voters to buy more time. Now the citizens of Platte County are paying for the deception, literally.”
Maki also pointed to a video Assistant Chief Deputy Collector Holly Cayer posted Oct. 19 on her campaign Facebook page, “Holly Cayer for Platte County Collector,” titled “The truth about the Homestead Credit. Please share!”
Maki provided The Landmark with a copy of the video. The video was no longer accessible through the original link when The Landmark checked Nov. 9.
In the video, Cayer described preparations in the collector’s office.
“We’re gearing up for another successful tax season, which means getting tax statements prepared, proofed and printed,” she said.
Cayer said the office received the necessary billing information from the assessor’s office and certified levies from the county clerk roughly the first full week of October.
“Once we had all that information available, we manually reviewed more than 20,000 parcels by hand,” she said.
Cayer was elected collector Nov. 3 and will take office in March.
Maki contends those preparations show the office had already decided to issue bills without the credit before the Oct. 27 hearing.
Maki questions mailing schedule
Maki said property taxes are due Dec. 31 and cited a state requirement that statements be mailed at least 30 days before that deadline, or by Dec. 1. He said this year’s statements were mailed by Nov. 3, nearly a month before the deadline and almost two months before taxes are due.
He alleges the timing was intended to prevent a court from intervening before the bills were sent.
“They rushed them out to get ahead of a court order,” Maki said. “That was the plan: make it a done deal before anyone could tell them to do their job.”
Maki said Palmer, Cayer and the deputies involved in preparing the bills should be held accountable for omitting the credit.
“It is despicable that elected officials think they can thumb their nose at the law, lie to the court, gaslight the public and get away with it,” Maki said.
