Dentist Frank Illuzzi was stunned when Vermont tax collectors began demanding a 6 percent sales tax on the value of toothbrushes and floss he hands out to patients. Senior care facility operator Jay Grimes was similarly surprised to get a $350,000 bill slapping a 9 percent restaurant tax on the meals served to residents in the dining room. Landscaper Richard "Buckwheat" Lowe got $18,000 in bills taxing him for the first time ever on the mulch he sells.
Vermont is among a handful of cash-strapped states getting more aggressive about collecting every tax owed â€" hiring more collectors, hounding scofflaws and exploiting corners of their tax laws that haven't been enforced in years. It's an effort to avoid what politicians from both parties are dead set against: raising taxes.
"You don't want to raise taxes until you're very sure the taxes that people are supposed to pay are being paid," said Rep. Janet Ancel, chairwoman of Vermont's House Ways and Means Committee.
Under adamant no-new-tax Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, Vermont has added about 10 new tax compliance auditors and has stepped up efforts to scour records in rural areas, and add greater scrutiny to businesses ranging from auctioneers to Internet-based cloud-computing services.
AP
In this May 17, 2012 photo, Richard Lowe loads a truck with mulch in Morrisville, Vt. Nursery owners and landscapers around Vermont have been getting big bills from the state recently for unpaid sales taxes on products like bark mulch and soil additives that many thought had an agricultural exemption from the 6 percent levy. Some are complaining that they were caught unaware of a change in the tax code made six years ago. “You don’t just change the taxes and laws and not tell somebody,†said Lowe, owner of Green Mountain Landscaping in Morrisville, who is fighting $18,000 in bills for back taxes. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
Close But for all its aggressiveness, Vermont's results have been mixed. The state reaped about $57 million during the 12 months that ended in June, up from about $50 million five years earlier â€" a net gain of $7 million. That's a tiny fraction of the state's $1.3 billion general fund, but it has helped lawmakers close a budget gap that at the beginning of this year was projected to be $46 million.
Other states have had much more success.
Idaho hired 48 temporary auditors and collectors in fiscal 2011 as part of Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's effort to boost revenues without raising taxes and narrow the so-called "tax gap" â€" the amount of taxes in the state that are due but go unpaid, either by error or by intent.
The added staff brought in more than $26.3 million, more than double the original estimate of $11.5 million. All the positions were made permanent this fiscal year.
Idaho's additional tax receipts are just a sliver of its roughly $2.7 billion budget, but they helped the state post a budget surplus for the first year since the Great Recession began in 2008, money that helped give state workers their first raises in five years.
Oklahoma added about 30 people to its tax collection staff since 2010 in an effort to help close a $900 million budget shortfall. The state collected nearly $35 million in delinquent taxes during the 12 months that ended in June, and overall sales tax revenues jumped by about $159 million from the first 10 months of fiscal 2011 to the same period in fiscal 2012.
States have a variety of strategies for following up when audits find tax scofflaws. One tactic in California is public shaming: The state publishes lists of individuals and businesses behind on income or sales taxes.
Others take a kinder approach. New York responded to the recent recession by stepping up its program to forgive parts of back payments due from taxpayers in economic distress.
Gale Garriott, executive director of the Federation of Tax Administrators, a Washington-based group that tracks state tax policy, said the handful of states that have taken a tough approach by hiring more auditors have generally been rewarded with more revenue.
沒有留言:
張貼留言