‘Hunting for More Taxpayers’

This is an item that was in the headlines of my hometown newspaper.

Tracking down new businesses and finding residents who aren’t paying Lorain’s income tax could be a way to boost income tax revenues, city Treasurer Karen Shawver said.

On Monday, Lorain City Council will discuss a list of suggestions from Shawver to find businesses and residents not yet paying income taxes.

“All of the changes will make the income tax department more efficient and enable us to utilize the current software to its maximum ability,” Shawver wrote.

It was unclear exactly how much the city could bring in, but Shawver said she’s convinced some Lorainites are not paying their taxes. They are not necessarily defrauding the city, but they or professional tax preparers might not know the city’s requirements, she said.

“We just have to take an all-out aggressive search to find those people,” Shawver said.

She asked council to consider increasing its income tax department budget for salaries to $179,000 to help implement the changes to collect more money. That figure still would be 15 percent less than department salaries of 2008, Shawver said.
http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2010/02/27/news/mj2374491.txt

I guess that proposed salary increase will be covered by all the taxpayers she ‘hunts down’.
She has other useful suggestions too, like

“Use an address list to cross-reference every address in the city. Staff would research addresses not found in the income tax system and create new tax accounts for residents not in the system.”

You know, hunt down people.
Newsflash, Karen: In case you haven’t noticed, Lorain is one of the most economically depressed areas in the state of Ohio, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we ranked somewhere near the bottom across the country.

Keep hunting, jackass.