The Boone County Fiscal Court discussed what it would mean for them and the City of Union in terms of a Memorandum of Understanding and exchange of information agreement at Tuesday’s meeting.
This MOA would be Boone County assisting Union in the startup and implementation of their new occupational license fee ordinance, which is a fee imposed on wages of employees within the city.
“Last year, the city passed an ordinance levying a 2% occupational license fee to workers in the city along with the $50 business license fee,” said County Administrator, Jeff Earlywine. “They were scheduled to commence with the the ordinance in January they pushed it back six months to July 1.”
Union originally wanted to see if Boone County would be willing to work with them and serve as their collection agent. Boone County’s tax administrator, Kim Krugel, met with the City of Union and they ultimately changed their minds.
“The city reconsidered their position and ultimately determined that they wanted to serve as their own collection agent,” said Earlywine. “They ask us to enter into an agreement that would provide limited assistance on the front end to help with setting up their account base and some of the startup elements to enable them to to collect the fee after July 1.”
Earlywine reminded the court that Boone County would not gain or lose money for this, they would simply bill the city for their staff time and any out of pocket expense.
“We possess all of the customer information with all the businesses in Union,” stated Earlywine. “This will be a pretty efficient way for the county to work with the city to make sure that they get their system and their account structure set up to enable them to fairly and unilaterally apply the tax to all businesses that are responsible and all employees that are responsible within the City of Union.”
This is a one time, front end agreement with no long term commitments.
“This is not an everyday, each week sort of thing,” said Krugel. “This is just when the tax returns are due, when they run into challenges and that they can call on us to say ‘how do I handle this’ or ‘what needs to be done?'”
Krugel also reminded the court that Boone County is currently the collection agency for the school board and how this MOA would be different than that one.
“We collect all the school board’s taxes internally,” said Krugel. “For Union, we’re just in a support role and administrative type of role to help them with the onboarding of the tax. So to help them develop their forms, their processes, their procedures, they’re going to use the same software that we currently use.”
The motion passed 4-0.