Frustrating inertia on tax issue

A million here, a million there …

Almost every American has heard some variation on the above refrain about government and money, popularly attributed to the late and legendary Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill.

Whatever the exact words, the lament is as old as governments and taxes: With vast sums at their disposal, officials tend to get astonishingly cavalier with other people’s money — namely ours.

Even if the money in question is “just” a penny.

The penny, metaphorically speaking, is revenue from a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax passed almost two decades ago, one that has technically been expired for the latter half of that. But, as reported from last week’s meeting of Columbus Council, it seems to be in a sort of Walking Dead zombie state, still bringing in money — but money it’s not supposed to be bringing in, and taxpayers aren’t supposed to be paying, any more.

“We’ve contacted the Department of Revenue numerous times,” Deputy City Manager Pam Hodge, who oversees finance, told the council. “And their response to us was, the only way that they would tell a business to no longer collect SPLOST dollars would be if they came up for a random audit and they determined that they were collecting sales tax that was not in effect any longer.”

So … unless the state is auditing a local business, randomly or otherwise, and discovers it’s collecting a dead tax, it’s not their problem.

There’s a further wrinkle. The state Department of Revenue says it is the city’s responsibility to make sure local businesses are collecting sales taxes correctly. In fact, the city did contact registered businesses in 2008, reminding owners that the SPLOST had expired and should no longer be collected. But the records of which businesses are collecting what taxes are compiled by the state, not the city. And the city doesn’t have access to them.

So the state Department of Revenue won’t provide the city with the information on tax collection that the Department of revenue says it’s the city’s responsibility to oversee.

Another annoying if not greatly significant detail is that this tax data access thing is one of those population-specific laws, as some lawmakers want casino gambling to be: The state is required to provide that information only to cities (plural?) with populations of a half-million or more. Let’s count those up.

Councilor Judy Thomas no doubt articulated not just the frustration of most if not all of her fellow councilors, but of other local officials around the state as well.

“We are, obviously, not the only government in the state of Georgia that this is happening to,” Thomas said.

Beyond the obvious problem of people paying tax they’re not supposed to, there’s the political deterrent effect on future sales tax-funded proposals. Supporting progress with a specific tax for a specific time or total is one thing. A tax that is supposed to go away and doesn’t is quite another.

This story was originally published February 20, 2017 at 5:12 PM with the headline "Frustrating inertia on tax issue."