The Clarion-Ledger reported Milwaukee Tools made a million-dollar mistake on its Hinds County tax bill:
"A Milwaukee Tool clerk's paperwork error means the manufacturing plant in Jackson must pay Hinds County $1.405 million more in property taxes than it contends it owes.
The Board of Supervisors on Monday denied Milwaukee Tool's request for relief, saying the company should have called it to the board's attention earlier than just a few weeks ago.
That 2010 tax bill already has been figured into the county's budget. Its loss would leave a gaping hole at a time when supervisors have borrowed money to make ends meet until tax revenues flow in later this month.
"This is not an issue that is a couple of months late. It's over a year late," said board attorney Crystal Wise Martin.
Company attorney Chris Pace of Jackson and David Creel, director of U.S. manufacturing for Milwaukee Tool, appeared before supervisors to explain the error. They asked supervisors to authorize Tax Assessor Charles Stokes to amend the company's tax bill to reflect $75,462.57 owed.
By law, supervisors can't make that adjustment, but they can give Stokes authority to do it.
"It was human error," Pace told supervisors. A company tax analyst putting together a spreadsheet including inventory at Milwaukee Tool plants erroneously entered $57 million as the value of inventory that passed through the Jackson plant for 2010. The taxes on that $57 million are $1,481,256.28.
"She, in fact, reported the inventory stored at our Olive Branch plant," Pace said. "They're going to owe additional tax dollars because of that."
He said the inventory value at the Jackson plant actually was about $2.6 million, which would have produced a tax bill of $75,462.57 so long as Milwaukee Tool had renewed with the county its application for an exemption from nonschool and other applicable taxes."
I attended the meeting Monday and can say the board was probably correct in its actions. Here are the facts to remember:
1. Milwaukee Tools submitted information in error to the county that included inventory from its warehouse in Desoto County.
2. Hinds County sent notice to Milwaukee Tools there was a huge increase in its tax bill and it needed to contact the county to see if there was a problem.
3. Milwaukee waited over a year to do anything about the problem.
4. Milwaukee did not pay any taxes on the bill, hoping the board would correct the problem and then it could pay an adjusted amount.
While everyone beat up Hinds County in the comments on the Clarion-Ledger website, the truth is the law does not allow the Hinds County Supervisors to change the tax bill at such a late date. I know what happened. All notices went to corporate headquarters in another state and disappeared into the bureaucratic black hole. The law permits only a limited range of remedies to the board in such a scenario- the one recommended by Supervisor Peggy Hobson-Calhoun: get credit for overpayment of taxes on future tax bills. The remedy for Milwaukee will probably be in court as it will be taxed by two counties for the same inventory. The court will throw out the tax bill from Hinds County based upon the erroneous inventory. The problem is the law itself that ties the Supervisors hands and the company elected not to pay the tax at all until it was resolved.
Watch the video below. Start at 24:00 on the first video. The Jackson Free Press published a pretty good story on the matter as well.
3 comments:
C'mon KF. When have you known the HindsCo Sups to follow the letter of the law? Get real.
I'm curious to see how this plays out. Ignorance is not a defense I would think. Error, could be.
The bill will go unpaid, I think, until the courts decide.
In that case, Hinds has a nut to solve for!
Down the road they'll probably try to credit Milwaukee with a barter of obsolete radios.
Post a Comment