Tax Collection Goof to Affect SFASD Budget

At Monday night's Spring-Ford Area School District board of education meeting, Board President Tom DiBello reported on finances, including a major concern with the tax collection service to the district.

Upper Providence Tax Collector Beverly Nohl was recently audited by the Montgomery County Controller's Office through the Division of Internal Audit for the period of Jan. 1, 2011 - Sept. 30, 2011.

"One concern we have to keep our eye on is the Upper Providence Tax Collection," DiBello said. "I talked to our solicitor and he is going to talk to the county controller to discuss. A large portion of money has not been collected, and we haven’t received it yet. This will have a direct impact on the budget. We're going to have to take some type of action to move forward."

Business Manager Tim Anspach said he had a meeting with the tax collector the week prior.

"They did bring the reports, which were delayed since December," Anspach said. "They submitted them to us as well as a reconciliation to make sure everything balances."

The report claims to have found "a potential material misstatement of financial records."

The first finding has to do with tax remittances. The report said the remittances were timely until the middle of July, but no remittances were made between July 16 and Oct. 31.

"County Resolution #09-C.42 requires remittances to the County Treasurer bi-weekly during the penalty period," the report said. "According to the Tax
Collector's records $21,259, and an additional $5,569 of Interims, were due
the County for July and August of 2011."

The report continues on to say the cause of this error was "due to the volume of school district receipts during that period" and the effect is that Nohl is not in compliance with County Resolution #09-C.42 with regard to the remit schedule.

"It is recommended that the Tax Collector consider additional staffing during
the discount period for the school distict tax collections to improve the recording period of taxes received and remittance due to the taxing authorities," the report concluded.

The second finding was that receipts were not consistently date stamped when they were received, although the receipts are noted to have been timely in regard to deposits.

"The cause of not date stamping is due to the volume at the end of the discount and flat periods," the report said. "Lack of date stamping the tax bills could enable misappropriating receipts in the wrong period allowing for inaccurate recordkeeping and inaccurate reporting to the proper taxing authority."

The audit recommended all tax bills be stamped when they are received to ensure accurate recording of tax receipts.

Nohl responded to the auditor in agreement with the findings.

Anspach could not be reached on Wednesday to give further comment on the report, but we will have an update as soon as contact is made. Stay tuned.

*The full audit can be seen in PDF form on this page.