NWOTCA

MEETING DATE: 09/15/05

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 10:00 a.m. at The Barn Restaurant at Sauder Village in Archbold, Ohio.

Updates on legislation/OML news

OML won’t be meeting until November, so there is nothing new to report at this time.

Report from Fedor Committee

Angie said a committee representing NWOTCA plans to meet with Senator Teresa Fedor every-other month with the possibility of a smaller group meeting with her on the alternate month. Committee members are Angie Kuhn (Sylvania), Jean Hilt (Perrysburg), Mike Rizzo (Maumee), Peter Rancatore (Toledo), Jeff Bugbee (Port Clinton), Doug Meyer (RITA), and Pat Wast (Oregon).

The first meeting was held on Thursday, September 1^st and the primary focus was to try and outline the group’s goals. Angie has sent out an e-mail to all members of NWOTCA asking for each administrator’s top two concerns with regard to municipal tax and why. It was also sent to other tax groups in the state so that our area can compare/contrast the concerns. Angie requested that members respond to this e-mail as quickly as possible.

It was agreed that it is important to keep the meetings on a nonpartisan level so that our group does not become a “tool” to one party. Senator Fedor said she will try to bring more legislators with her to the next meeting.

Ohio Business Gateway Update

Angie attended a Gateway Forum meeting a few weeks ago. The next deadline OBG has to meet is the acceptance of business tax returns scheduled for January 1, 2006. While it appears that they are working earnestly to provide an on-line software program that companies can use to file through OBG’s website, there is doubt as to how much it will be used. Larger tax preparers probably will not use it because they already have a program in their computer and they won’t want to re-enter all of the information into OBG’s program. Furthermore, federal schedules will still have to be submitted separately. The representatives from OBG gave impressive figures on the use of the web-site, but there has been little activity on the municipal tax level. The large usage figures relate to sales tax, child support, and other state tax programs.

There are two web-sites for OBG:

• www.obg.ohio.gov - This is the general information website.
• www.munitax.obg.ohio.gov - This is the website containing the information presented at the forum meeting.

Uniformity discussion

Real estate – Discussion among members confirmed that it is unlikely that the entire state will ever be uniform in their treatment of this issue. Some cities use the 50/50 method (half of the tax paid to the city where the realtor’s license hangs and half paid to the city where the realtor lives) and others base the tax on the physical location of the house. Larger agents seem to use the allocation method while smaller agents don’t allocate.

Common form – A meeting for the common form committee is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 22^nd in Sylvania.

Angie said that it would be in the group’s best interests to try and work with Creative Solutions, a software builder for tax preparers, to try and come up with a common form that works for our area.

Peter (Toledo) suggested that at the very least, we should all be able to agree on a standardized Non-Resident Refund form. Everyone is supposed to bring a copy of their city’s NRR form to the next meeting.

New Business

RE: Information requests via e-mail – When sending an e-mail with an information request, please list the topic in the subject line of the e-mail format. When responding to an e-mail information request, please “respond to all”.

Information Exchange

Karlyn (Napoleon) brought a form that they use with the post office to get good addresses for taxpayers.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 12^th at 9:30 a.m. at Bowling Green’s new community center located at 1245 W. Newton Road.