The city of Fort Wright is preemptively opposing state agencies’ centralized collection of local payroll taxes.
The opposition takes the form of a city resolution, which the Fort Wright City Council unanimously passed at a special meeting on Wednesday. The move follows meetings the Fort Wright City Administrator Jill Cain Bailey had recently with other Kentucky city administrative officers and members of the Kentucky League of Cities in which the topic of the commonwealth instituting a centralized system of payroll tax collection had been discussed.
Mayor David Hatter said to LINK nky after Wednesday’s meeting that he wasn’t aware of any bills currently in the works but worried such a move might curtail the city’s ability to attract businesses. Hatter touted the city’s low payroll tax rate as an incentive, and he worried centralization would bring additional state fees that would make the city anti-competitive.
“I don’t know that this is very fully baked out, but just the idea, from a competitive standpoint for the city, is a bad idea in my opinion,” Hatter said. “I can’t think of a single time where the state has taken something over, and it’s gotten better. The idea that they might want to charge us a fee to collect this, especially if they mandate it, is kind of offensive to me.”
“I think the argument in favor of it, which I understand, as someone that works in a small business and a former small business owner, when you have all these different taxing jurisdictions, it’s a pain in the butt to have to figure out who do I pay what rates to and all that sort of thing,” Hatter said later in the meeting. “But, again, I think from our perspective, the system we have works good.”
Read the full text of the resolution below.