It’s not surprising during tight economic times to see a longer list of Douglas County property owners who have not paid their taxes.

It’s not even surprising to see that the list includes many builders and developers, who have been directly affected by a market in which fewer people are building or buying new homes.

What is a little surprising — to many people, although not county officials — is that many property owners consider the choice not to pay property taxes on time as a simple business decision. Although the number of people who owe taxes is particularly long this year, County Treasurer Paula Gilchrist said last week that many builders routinely wait until a property is sold to pay the taxes on that property. “Some of them just operate that way,” she said.

In fact, she added, “These are not necessarily the people we’re concerned about. We’re confident we’ll get our money back.”

Well, maybe, but, especially in such a depressed housing market, why are they any more confident about builders eventually paying their taxes than anyone else? Builders must spend a lot of upfront money to produce their product, but so do, for instance, farmers, who take out large loans each year to produce a crop. If markets falter — or, in the case of farmers, a crop fails — either businessman finds himself in a bind.

Although the total of unpaid taxes is up by 41 percent this year, county officials aren’t particularly concerned because that amount still only represents about 2 percent of the overall tax receipts and the county budget factors in a delinquency rate of 2.5 percent. No doubt a certain number of taxpayers will be either embarrassed or surprised enough at seeing their names printed in the newspaper that they will pay their taxes in a timely manner. That’s something to consider when officials argue that they shouldn’t have to bear the expense of publishing such tax lists in their official newspaper.

A few properties on the list may be headed to bankruptcy and a sheriff’s sale, but many probably are owned by people who simply are making a choice to delay their tax payments and bear the additional interest and legal charges for paying their taxes late. For them, the county runs a de facto loan business.

We understand that we’re in difficult economic times, but for people who simply pay their taxes and pay them on time, those who look at annual tax payments as an optional expense can be a little hard to accept.