What impact would House Bill 399 have on Clayton County?
I do not know what the overall financial impact would be. I have received reports with variations on impact to budgets of the county, school system and College Park. It is not unusual to get differing opinions and reports.
What I do know is Clayton cannot take another hit to its revenue sources. Since 2009, we have had to endure extension of tax exemptions granted to Delta Airlines by the General Assembly; loss of the consolidated car rental facility and financial fallout from the loss of public school accreditation.
With HB 399, Clayton schools would lose $8.8 million, the annual salaries of 130 teachers. Further erosion of the county tax digest would negatively impact our ability to provide services. The county will still have to provide law enforcement and judicial services to the airport as well as its residents.
Additionally, if Clayton County is prohibited to collect the tax, even though about 80 percent of the airport lies within the county, a government entity cannot tax another government agency. So Clayton cannot pass this tax on to Atlanta.
If the reason for this legislation is to correct a process operating under the wrong code, why wouldn’t we just move the ability for Clayton to levy the tax from the Aviation Code to the Code Section related to taxation? It is obvious the House, Senate and governor‘s intentions, and the spirit of the law, were to allow Clayton to collect airport taxes.
If the argument is that airport vendors should not be paying taxes on real property to which they do not have exclusive rights to, why does the revised contract between Atlanta and the vendors stipulate that: “Notwithstanding the foregoing, the aviation manager may authorize concessionaire to pass through to the customer certain possessory interest taxes payable by concessionaire directly to various taxing authorities, provide that such pass-through is reflected as a separate line itemization on each invoice or receipt issued to the customer?”
The only taxing authorities authorized to collect the “possessory interest tax” are College Park and Clayton County. This reference does not apply to any other airport or county in the state. In other words, the vendors, by contract, have the ability to pass the tax on to airport customers. This method of passing on tax requirements to customers is acceptable in the state in the form of hotel-motel taxes in many of our cities and counties. I submit that a high percentage of airport concessionaires/customers are not Georgia residents. Clayton could have handled the vendors’ appeals in a timelier manner, but we must allow the civil process to work.
To allow Clayton to continue to levy the tax and the vendors to pass on the cost to its “out of town” customers and international visitors is consistent with the hotel-motel tax. We will continue to fight this motion through the Senate, the governor’s office and beyond.
