NWOTCA

MEETING DATE:  01/12/05

 

Meeting took place at Bowling Green Municipal Building, 9:30 a.m.

 

Ohio Business Gateway Update

Joe Zapatosky, Program Director, and Jan Tornes were present from Ohio Business Gateway to give a presentation about the Gateway system and answer questions.  (Some information below has been added after I talked with Randy Shipley and got clarification on a few issues.) 

 

Contacts: 

Municipal tax project team’s e-mail address is obg@ohio.gov.  Phone number is 614-644-8018.

Joe Zapotosky’s e-mail address is joe.zapotosky@ohio.gov.  Phone number is 614-466-7344.

Jan Tornes’s e-mail address is jan.tornes@ohio.gov.  Phone number is 614-728-7271. 

 

The website for information on the municipal segment of the Gateway system is located at http://munitax.obg.ohio.gov. 

 

General information:

Mr. Zapatosky stressed that the target audience of this system is business; it was not designed for individual filers.

 

In 2004, the Gateway system had:

            Over 75,000 businesses registered

            Over 350,000 reports filed

            Over $2 billion in payments

 

Timeline for the municipal portion on the Gateway system:

2005:   Estimated payments by businesses

            Filing site for extension requests

2006:   Net profit returns can be filed

2007:   Withholding payments can be made

2008:   Withholding reconciliations can be filed

 

The system will carry approximately 550 municipalities, 103 banking partners, and will be available to all businesses that file municipal returns.

 

Per Randy Shipley, it looks like everyone will receive daily reports.  If there are days with no activity, it will be reflected as “No Activity” in that day’s report.  Each day, you will receive:

v     a NACHA file report (lists all ACH transactions belonging to your municipality)

v     A data file report (if you indicated on the survey that you wanted both human-readable and machine-readable data, you will get two reports)

 

The title of the NACHA file will contain the full year/2 digit month/2 digit day/dollar amount (i.e., “20050112145726” in the body of the title tells you that the report is for January 12, 2005 and the total dollar amount is $1,457.26.)  You should be able to tie that dollar amount to the total dollar amount in the data file (also explained later).

 

Each municipality should receive a certification form from Ohio Business Gateway (OBG) within the next week or two.  This form must be signed & returned to OGB.  Once they get the form back, they will set up your mailbox and issue a password.  You will then be able to log in and get your daily reports.

 

The Process:

1)     The municipality logs into the mailbox and picks up their NACHA file report and data report(s).  The report is accessed by right-clicking on the report.  Then choose “Save Target As” and file it in a folder that you have created in your system.

2)     The NACHA file contains the ACH information for payment on accounts filed for the day.  ** It is the responsibility of the municipality to forward this info to the bank.  The money does not get credited to your municipality until this is done.  **

3)     The information in the data file lists the name of each business account making a payment, the amount of the payment, and the quarter the payment was made for.  The total of these payments should match the total of the NACHA file.

4)     After the information has been downloaded into a file in your own system, you can delete it from the OBG system. (If you accidentally delete a report, OBG can recover it for you if it is within 45 days of the report date.)

 

** I spoke with Randy Shipley on 1/13/05 and he said that the following banks have agreed to receive the NACHA files directly from OBG and make the ACH transactions.  In other words, municipalities having these banks will not have to transfer the NACHA file to their bank every day.  They will, however, have to approve those transactions with the bank each day (probably with just a phone call).  These banks are:

            Huntington                  Fifth Third                   Key Bank                   National City

            First Merit                   U.S. Bank                   Sky Bank                    Bank One

            Minster Bank

 

What you should be doing right now in preparation:

Ø      Watch the mail for the certification form.  Fill it out & send it back ASAP so you can get a password and mailbox with OBG.

Ø      Call your bank and talk with your ACH contact about the NACHA file.  If your bank is not one of those listed above, find out what you will need to do to transmit this data to the bank on a regular basis.  Remember, your account doesn’t get the money until the bank gets the NACHA file.  Even if you do bank with one of the banks listed above, find out what you will need to do to confirm the transactions.

 

 

Legislation Updates

HB362 was passed before the Legislature adjourned at the end of 2004.  It contained two provisions that affected only Findlay and Cincinnati.  These provisions mitigated some of the damage that would have been done to their tax revenue due to language contained in HB95.

 

OML Seminar

The OML website shows the annual tax meeting being held on July 20th through July 22nd in Cleveland.

 

Committee Meetings

Real Estate – to be announced

Common Form – Tuesday, January 25th at 9:30 a.m. in Maumee

 

Minutes/Newsletter

It was agreed that e-mails are an acceptable replacement for the old newsletter system.

In regard to keeping formal minutes, it was agreed that Pat Wast (Oregon) would keep informal minutes and forward them to Angie Kuhn (Sylvania) for editing and placement on the NWOTCA website.  It will allow members who cannot attend, an overview of what took place at the meeting.

 

Next Meeting

Scheduled for Wednesday, February 9, 2005 at 9:30 a.m. in Bowling Green at the Municipal Building.