The Georgia Municipal Association has given Woodstock a pat on the back for the way the city administers its hotel/motel tax.
“In reviewing the returns of the lodging properties individually, there is little to suggest any substantive under-reporting” for tax purposes, the association says in its report, accepted by the City Council recently.
“The city’s administration of the tax is excellent, certainly one of the best we have encountered in the state, and because of that, an extraordinarily high compliance ethic appears to be maintained among the lodging providers. It is obvious that those problems encountered in our 2009 engagement have been corrected through adoption of our model ordinance and the auditing then conducted.”
Woodstock retained the association last summer to audit five hotels in the city for compliance with the local tax, agreeing to pay $500 per hotel plus another $500 for a special field audit, if called for. The GMA reviewed lodging revenues and analyzed hotel returns for the period September 2013 through August 2016.
When it performed a similar audit last year for Canton, the association found 16 of 30 restaurants owed more than $92,000 in total unpaid taxes, penalties and interest on under-reported mixed-drink sales.
