Orange County residents living in unincorporated North Tustin are one step closer to getting their own zip code thanks to a bill currently making its way through Congress.

Local leaders say this zip code is needed because the town's status as an unincorporated area can cause confusion, which sometimes leads to residents paying more taxes than they should.

The unincorporated community is located north of Tustin, east of the 55 freeway, and home to around 25,000 residents. According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2020, North Tustin is a census-designated place.

While a small part of North Tustin shares a zip code with Tustin, most of its residents share a zip code with Santa Ana - which can cause problems, especially when it comes to sales tax.

For example, Santa Ana has a higher sales tax than unincorporated Orange County, meaning residents can sometimes be charged the wrong tax rate when purchasing items such as cars.

"In most of these transactions, there is an opportunity for someone to write in later and prove where they live and then get a refund - but it's often an awful lot of hoops to jump through to get it," said O.C. Supervisor Don Wagner, who is also a North Tustin resident. "It's very complicated, a lot of people don't know about it, and what we're trying to do is just stop the issue from the very beginning."

The bill made it out of committee this week, and one of the co-sponsors, Congresswoman Young Kim, is hopeful that it will go before the full house before the end of the year.

"We took the first step, we're very happy about it - and the fact that we did it in the unanimous, bipartisan way gives me hope that we may be able to get this done," Kim told KTLA's Chip Yost.