Sandy Springs Hires Firm To Recover Taxes Owed To City

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The Sandy Springs City Council has approved a contract with an auditing firm to ensure the city is receiving business license fees, franchise fees and waste hauler fees.

The Council during its Nov. 3 meeting approved a contract with PRA Government Services LLC (d/b/a Revenue Discovery Systems or RDS) to conduct the audit.

RDS was selected through a competitive procurement process as the top ranked company to provide revenue auditing services for Sandy Springs.

The parent company for RDS, PRA Government Services, has 35 years of experience in providing state and local governments with a variety of revenue administration, discovery/recovery and auditing services designed to ensure taxpayers and other revenue source compliance.

As part of its contract with the city, RDS will identify and contact businesses not on the city’s current taxpayer registration list that appear to be operating within the city’s jurisdiction to verify that the business is exempt from, or has complied with, its tax obligations.

RDS will provide those non-compliant businesses with support to complete the necessary paperwork and rectify the error, including calculating assessments owed to the city.

The audit may cover the following revenue sources:

• Alcohol by the drink excise taxes
• Business and occupational license taxes
• Car rental taxes
• E911 taxes
• Hotel/motel excise taxes
• Public utility franchise fees
• Solid waste hauler franchise fees
• Wholesale alcohol taxes

Under the approved contract, the city could capture 73 percent of the revenues collected from non-compliant taxpayers. Sandy Springs shall pay RDS a 27-percent fee to provide revenue-auditing services to the city. RDS will begin its contract services in December 2015.

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