The Georgia Municipal Association (lobbying group for Cities in Georgia) recommends the State take necessary action to ensure full collection of the sales tax, including the option that taxes be collected by the local government. EXPLANATION: Representatives of the Georgia Department of Revenue have stated that the department is able to audit less than 1 percent of the businesses in each sector remitting state and local government sales taxes to the state. While most businesses comply with sales tax laws, untold dollars remain on the table, uncollected by the state, as a result of inadequate enforcement. While it is impossible to know how much sales tax revenue remains uncollected in Georgia, a voluntary system of compliance allows for shortfalls. In order to ensure full collections of sales tax revenues, the state should provide the Department of Revenue with more capacity for enforcement, including ample auditors, or should authorize the private collection of sales taxes or the collection of sales tax revenues by local governments. For years, municipal officials have requested data detailing the status of retail transactions. Municipal officials claim that this data will increase compliance by allowing municipal officials to compare gross sales reported municipality-wide to the state with the aggregate gross sales reported to municipal officials through the collection of occupation taxes or other proxies. Moreover, this data will indicate the health and vitality of the retail sector of the local economy and demonstrate whether economic development efforts focused on increasing retail activity are having the desired impact. Finally, anecdotal evidence in other states indicates that as more detailed sales tax data is reported, compliance increased. GMA believes that the following six steps would substantially improve the reporting and accuracy of sales tax collection. (1) Require the Department of Revenue to collect data showing sales tax collections in cities; (2) Fully capture all data, whether electronically or manually filed; (3) Require the Department of Revenue to share sales tax data for collections within municipal boundaries; (4) To the extent required to protect taxpayers, support confidentiality and privacy of information shared with cities; (5) Support efforts to increase audits to ensure compliance; and (6) Allow for more timely remittance of sales tax dollars to local governments Full collection of sales tax is just one of dozens of policy issued discussed this past weekend in Savannah at the annual GMA convention.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 11:40:58 +0000