Hi All,

Below are responses to my ListServe question, which many of you emailed inquiring about the responses. Thank you to everyone who emailed a response.

City of Rolling Hills Estates
Mike Whitehead
3/3/2009
Question:
Annually in June, our local Chamber of Commerce hosts a Street Fair with approximately 150 -160 out of town business participating in the event with 40,000 in attendance (Chamber’s count). I finally have the Chamber’s cooperation to make sure every vendor has a business license prior to the start of the event, however, I doubt that any of the businesses in the past have filed a “Temporary Sales Location” form to the BOE for us to recapture the sales tax generate while conducting business in our City.
How does your City handle:
1. BOE’s form for Temporary Sales Locations to be completed prior and at the conclusion of the event?
2. Do you have a field representatives from BOE walk the event asking vendors for the form and checking for compliance?
3. Do you bring in other agencies such as the Health Dept to check the food and drink serving vendors.
4. Am I missing anything else (besides Fire and the Sheriffs)?
1 / We also have a Street Fair in our City. We ask the vendors to provide a Seller’s Permit for the event showing a “City of Orange” address. However, it is very hard to get them to comply, particularly because we don’t require a bus lic for the event, and also because a lot of them are non-profit groups. In the past, the BOE has on occasion walked the streets to check for sellers permits.
Leonie Crouch, CRO
Finance Supervisor
General Revenue
City of Orange
2 / We have Sandcastle Event with approx 100 vendors.
All are to complete a vendor application with fees and submit a BOE( 410, special events swap meets)form, and a copy of temp food permit if applicable.
We then just forward them to BOE. And hope they do their job.
The committee hosting the event is responsible that each vendor has a license and we work together very closely to achieve this. Otherwise we charge committee the vendor fees.
The health dept is involved too. Our health dept requires the committee holding the event to obtain a permit for them too. We schedule meeting w committee monthly and all get together to work out issues.
They pay for all costs ,fire lifeguards, animal control, emt, public works, sheriffs.
If you need additional info please feel free to call
Kristine Wiesmann
Account Clerk
City of Imperial Beach
3 / We make the information to the vendors available in their signup packets and don’t have a great way to see that they actually paid their sales tax. I would be interested to see what other cities are doing to make sure that they get the money that is owed to them!!
Danielle
City of La Mesa
4 / 1. We don’t do temporary business license, they are all 1 year.
2. We ask the vendors to provide us with their sellers permit in advance when applying for a business license.
3. When we have food vendors we ask for the health department permit
4. Building & Safety needs to check to make sure that the canopies are put up according to code.
Minerva Gamboa
City of Rancho Cucamonga
5 / We make each and every vendor apply for a business license based on the number of days for the event.($8.50 per day) That application must be accompanied by a sellers permit for the location. We do very big events like the Strawberry Festival and TET festival where we have over 150 vendors each, so we usually meet with the event promoter and make them responsibile for collection of the complete applications, seller's permits and payments. Sometimes we issue the business license certificates ata mandatory meeting so if you do not come you do not receive a license so you cannot participate.
We have the Health Department come out to a mandatory food vendors meeting held several weeks before the event. They put on a presentation of all the dos and dont's. The health department also comes to the first day of the event to be sure that things are the way they want them. No food storage on the ground, hand washing stations, food temperatures etc. Many times the BOE comes to the vendor's meetings if we include all the vendors and not just the food vendors.
Pam Gillis GardenGrove
6 / If it is a one-time presence in the City within a year they would qualify for an apportion tax of $56.75 must provide copy of sellers permit with an Declaration for Apportioned Business Tax application. We can have license inspectors visit events if necessary for compliance.
If you may have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to call.
Thank you,
Susan Seviane
License Inspector
City of Newport Beach
7 / #1. Only the organizer of the event is required to obtain a business license; he must turn in a list of vendors along with their Sellers Permit Numbers. We do not require BOE forms.
#2. We do not have staff to verify compliance, we just hope that the vendors file their sales taxes correctly.
#3. If food is involved, we do obtain the County Health Departments approval.
#4. All City Departments must approve as with any other business(including Fire); depending on the type of event, Police approval is obtained.
Thank You
Karen Kelley
Business License
City of Victorville
8 / The City of Whittier has a Wednesday night Family Festival every year that runs from March through October in our Uptown area. We require that all vendors obtain a Business License before they set up. They are charged a total of $50 for the entire season or if they are just selling for 1 day we charge $15. If they decide to continue, they can pay $15 for the next week and then the final $20 if they continue. We have not done anything with the BOE for this event though.
If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Michelle Gabel
Deputy City Treasurer
City of Whittier
9 / Here at the City of Huntington Beach we have a Specific Events coordinator and a Specific Events committee. For an event of that size the organizer, the Chamber in your case, would have to apply for a Spec Evnts permit which entails a meeting with the committee. At the meeting is where the Fire, Police, Public Works, Business License, etc depts let the organizer know what is required and go over the logistics of the event.
10 / No I don’t wait to see everyone’s temp sales forms…. It would be nearly impossible to gather all of them in a timely manner as most organizers are still arranging their vendors right up to the last minute before the event. I educate the organizer on the BOE requirements, but that is the extent of it. Unfortunately with large events, most of the tax reporting turns out to be on the honor system. Having a BOE field rep walk the event is a great idea, if you can get someone from the BOE to do that for you.
For Health dept issues, I do believe that the organizer is the one who notifies that agency. It is not part of their business license application process.
Since we are a non-regulatory tax, my responsibility is to make sure they have completed their bus lic app & related worksheets for their vendors and service providers (ie: porta potty company, tent co’s, announcer’s etc) and then to collect their business license tax money according to the number of vendors & svc prvdrs. And this is all per our muni code which you can view online if interested at www.surfcity-hb.org Title 5, Chapter 5.16, Section 5.16.317.
I hope this helps. And I hope you have some help on your end – that is a big event to monitor all those items on your own.
Let me know if you need anything further~
Corinne Hoffman, CRO
Senior Accounting Technician
Business License
City of Huntington Beach
11 / We have a similar event here in Pacifica in September, it is run by a local group organized as a non-profit. I would be interested in seeing the answers you receive since I had no idea that any sales tax could accrue to the City from vendor sales. I will have to go to the Board of Equalization web site and check out the form. Perhaps we can make sure our organizers hand these out to everyone. Thanks for bringing this up.
Gillian Cadgene
12 / We have a tax category for sponsors of one time events. The tax is $200 the first day and $100 each day thereafter. The tax pays for all of the vendors participating in the event, therefore the individual vendors do not have to file applications and remit a tax separately. Easier for the vendors, the sponsors, and your staff. The sponsor completes the application form and remits the tax on behalf of the vendors. They recoup their cost by charging the vendors a booth or space fee.
Form BT-530-B instructs vendors how to claim temporary sales locations. On the other side of the form there is a schedule to enter all the temporary sales locations. You can obtain a copy of the form and type in you city on the top line and type the event name after the city (to remind the vendor what they participated in). Ask the sponsor how many vendors will be participating. Make enough copies for all of the vendors and give it to the sponsor and tell them that it is part of the information package they give to their participating vendors.
Monique Napier
Business Tax Officer
City of Camarillo
13 / We do not push the sales tax for one-day events – we feel lucky that we can get the license fee from them.
Yuko M. Dunham
Revenue Manager
City of Carson
14 / We’re not allowed to license the vendors at these events for political reasons.
Andrew Thompson
Revenue Supervisor, City of San Rafael
15 / Hermosa Beach has 2 street fairs per year with over 200 vendors; they are handled by our Chamber of Commerce which collects “in-lieu” flat rate license fees from each vendor. The Chamber does not accept an application packet from a vendor without evidence of a resale number from the BOE. The chamber remits the license fees to the city and we don’t have to bother processing a license application for each vendor. Works very well.
Mary Watkins
16 / City of Chino,
Our annual 'Farmers Market' spans 3 months. We require proof of BOE permit showing Chino as additional location before participating.