Hotels In South Virginia Beach|"VV Council Denies Hotels' Appeal On Taxes, Rejects Settlement Offer"

Source              :  vvdailypress.com
Category        :  Hotels In South Virginia Beach
By                  :   Jim E. Winburn
Posted By     :  Hotels in Virginia Beach South Courtyard

Hotels In South Virginia Beach

The city on Tuesday denied an appeal by three hotel operators and ordered them to pay more than $30,000 in past due transient occupancy taxes. Council members voted 5-0 to deny the appeal for Days Inn Victorville for a $7,826.83 assessment, Travel Inn Motel for $9,364.45, and Budget Inn Kentwood for $12,822.96. Before the council’s decision, Frank A. Weiser, an attorney representing the city of Victorville Hotel/Motel Association, told the City Council that hotel operators had decided to offer a settlement just before the council’s public meeting. City Attorney Andre de Bortnowsky told Weiser that the offer, which “cuts the proposed tax amounts in half,” came too late for the council to consider it in closed session.

He also expressed concern with the other four hotel operators included in Weiser’s July 24 appeal in response to the City Council’s June 11 decision. Since the June 11 hearing, Green Spot Motel, Mojave Village Motel, and Budget Inn Victorville have paid the tax due the city. Economy Inn chose to pay its tax prior to the hearing. “My concern with it would be that you have already made decisions that affect other hotels in city of Victorville,” de Bortnowsky said. “They have asked previously for different amounts, and if you accept post settlement you would be treating this group of hotels differently than you have already treated past hotels.” Weiser also argued for the hotels’ refusal to open their books to a city audit based on their Constitutional right to privacy. He said that this does not necessarily give the city the right to simply and arbitrarily estimate the tax due, along with interest, if a hotel operator fails to open its records for whatever reason.

“I think that is the central issue that came out of the motel owners saying, that whether you like it or not ... we still have a Fourth Amendment right,” Weiser said. Councilman Jim Kennedy, himself an accountant with an office in San Bernardino, did not place much merit in Weiser’s claim. “Never once have I tried to make the argument that because my client did not have records or didn’t wanted to show them to the auditor that’s a reason for not assessing a tax,” Kennedy said at Tuesday’s meeting. Mayor Jim Cox told fellow council members that the hotels’ appeal rests on whether evidence has been presented to show that errors have been made with either the city’s audit or appeal process regarding the hotels’ tax assessments.

“It does appear with all the information available that it is simply money owed to the city,” Cox said. “We have all of this data that indicates the money is owed. I don’t see how we can settle for a less amount.” The city conducted a transient occupancy tax audit on 21 hotels for a three-year span from 2010 to 2012, which revealed that seven of the city’s hotels had “substantial errors in the reporting of the taxes for the audit period totaling $520,132.92,” according to a city staff report from June.

Source : vvdailypress.com/articles/offer-41911-rejects-appeal.html