Business owners being forced to pay delinquent taxes – 5/29/07
By: KristinMurdock, WV Public Broadcasting
Studio intro:
One-point-million dollars- that’s how much delinquent businesses owe CabellCounty for the past two tax years. But now the county has a way for those delinquent taxpayers to pay up.
A piece of 2004 legislation regarding personal property taxes went into effect last year. The law gives business owners who haven’t paid the taxes have two choices; pay up or lose your business license. The bill also said counties could individually go after those businesses operating without a license.
CabellCounty’s sheriff’s department is taking that order seriously.
As Kristin Murdock reports, Cabell County Sheriff Kim Wolfe plans to start shutting down businesses July first.
--
Murdock:The old saying applies: shape up or ship out. The Cabell County Sheriff’s department wants business owners to pay up their delinquent taxes.
Tom Bell: Part of doing business is paying your taxes. We just want to make sure that the message is real clear to people that paying taxes is not an optional thing.
Murdock:Tom Bell is the Cabell County Tax deputy. He’s in charge of logging all of the delinquent taxes.
Bell:If business ‘A’is not paying their taxes, then they have an unfair advantage over businesses ‘B’ and ‘C’ because they have cash that these other two businesses don’t have.
Murdock:Four years ago, Deputy Tom Bell felt the delinquent amount was out of control so he went to the local delegates and senators for help. Bell helped draft the legislation to revoke business licenses if the business owners did not pay their taxes.
The County’s only option until now was to take delinquent taxpayers to court. But a lawsuit could take as many as two years to be heard by a judge.
Bell: Collection of taxes through the court system certainly burdens the court system down. So, when these people don’t pay, and then we have to load up the court system with case to collect them then it does affect the public and the court system.
Murdock:The new law also has the support of State Chamber of Commerce President Steve Roberts.
Steve Roberts: What we can appreciate that in our state we are a high business tax state. And we understand that there are both businesses and individuals who fall behind and who get in trouble because of an inability to pay a tax. But, in order for a tax system to be fair, it has to be equitably administered. And that means that everybody who owes has to pay.
Murdock:Business owners have until July 1st to pay.
After that, Cabell County Sheriff Kim Wolfe says he’s going after the businesses that don’t have a license.
Kim Wolfe:Quite honestly, it’s to benefit the majority of the businesses. Whether the business or individuals feel like that there’s no penalty for doing that and they get away with it. We just want to remind them of the statutes and that this is the Sheriff’s job and we’ll hold them accountable.
Murdock:The State Tax office sent three certified letters to all businesses on the list. Tom Bell and a sheriff’s deputy then went to each business to make sure they knew about the July 1 deadline.
Business owner,Jerry Bartoe, found out about the deadline when he got one of those visits one afternoon.
Jerry Bartoe:About three weeks ago, in May, Ted Barr and Tom Bell came to the store and told us it basically was a courtesy call that we had until July 1st to take care of the taxes. Which really wasn’t a problem, other than there were years that were included in the amount that we knew we didn’t owe.
Murdock:Bartoe owns two Dairy Queens in Huntington. He only owed taxes on one of those properties. He was set up on a payment plan for years, and then he says the county quit taking his payments.
Bartoe:When we went to pay 2002’s taxes, they refused our payment. We knew we owed those, but since we couldn’t get a response other than we can’t accept your check we just let it go. Assuming they would contact us when it became a problem. Well, the years rolled by and no one ever contacted us. So we were just waiting for us to become an issue, basically, before we were gonna go make it right. We felt it was their obligation to get in touch with us.
Murdock:He doesn’t deny he owes about $24,000 in taxes, but Bartoe claims he never got one of those certified letters.
Bartoe:We never received any correspondence from anyone. That’s the strange part of it for us also. We assumed we would get a certified letter at some point and have to go down and obviously get this taken care of. And that never happened, I cannot tell you why.
Murdock:Last Thursday afternoon, Bartoe paid his delinquent taxes to the county.
The top business on the list owes $250,000.
Perhaps the most notable name on the list is Blenko glass, which is a major tourist attraction in the county. It owes $45,000 for the ’05 and ’06 tax years.
Cabell County Sheriff Wolfe says when looking at the list, Blenko stuck out at him. But he also says he can’t pay favoritism to Blenko.
Wolfe:Blenko glass, I think, is legitimately trying to, you know it’s been a traditionally historical landmark and business and do everything we can. But they need to pay their taxes. I think their in a re-alignment of doing some things and we really hope that they can stay in business cause that’s what we want in the area; more businesses to grow. But again, we can’t overlook that because as Mr. Bell said it’s not an option to pay your taxes, it’s the law.
Murdock:Dairy Queen owner, Jerry Bartoe, thinks shutting working businesses down will only hurt the economy.
Bartoe: I think that’s a lose-lose situation for everyone. If you just take our business as an example, if you shut us down, what have you really accomplished? You’ve taken a $175,000 payroll out of the system. You’ve lost B&O taxes, you’ve lost unemployment, you’ve lost workmans’ comp and you’ve sent a bunch of workers back to unemployment that have a very hard time finding employment. We’re just a small company. You can imagine how that would impact the state in the long run if you started hitting some of the larger businesses.
Murdock:He just wants businesses to be responsible and pay up, like he did.
For WV Public Broadcasting, I’m Kristin Murdock in Huntington.