CVB BOARD WANTS MORE DETAILS ON TAX

Cape Girardeau's Convention and Visitors Bureau wants more details on how the city's hotel-motel-restaurant tax is collected.

The CVB advisory board will ask city finance director John Richbourg to explain how the taxes are enforced and collected at the November board meeting.

Dan Drury questioned dips in September collections for both the hotel-motel and restaurant taxes.

The September totals, which reflect August sales, were down by approximately $1,000 from the totals for September 1997, despite the fact that the taxes were expanded to include more businesses in April.

"I'm going to have to go back to the old TV show `Lost in Space,'" Drury said. "This does not compute."

The monthly report on hotel-motel-restaurant tax collection showed the city collected $30,538.16 last month in hotel-motel taxes, compared to $31,579.87 in September 1997.

Restaurant tax collections totalled $57,566.52 last month compared to $58,710.47 in September 1997.

Drury said he didn't understand how revenues could have gone down when more businesses are collecting the tax.

Under the change approved by voters in April, the 1 percent restaurant tax now applies to pizza delivery businesses, convenience stores, supermarkets, ice cream parlors and other businesses which sell prepared foods. The hotel-motel tax now also includes bed and breakfast inns, which were previously exempt.

"My business wasn't down in August," said Drury, who owns Burger King restaurants and Holiday Inns. "Something's not right."

Terri Clark-Bauer, director of the CVB, said some businesses might be late in paying the tax.

Walter Denton, assistant to the city manager, said businesses are sometimes delinquent in collecting sales taxes, which can throw off collection figures.

Drury said the city needs to take more action to make sure collection of the taxes is properly enforced.

"Somebody's going to have to go out and buy something and see if the tax is being applied," he said.

The hotel-motel-restaurant tax was expanded after CVB members learned last year that several restaurants in the city weren't collecting the tax, some because they hadn't been notified that they were supposed to.

City officials recovered some $36,000 in back restaurant taxes last year.

Dennis "Doc" Cain said the board needs to let city staff enforce the collection of the tax.

"It's not our job to make sure that Joe Blow pays this tax and it's not our job to make sure that we're getting every dime that we're supposed to get from the tax," Cain said. "It's somebody's job, but it's not ours. We're starting to spend 30 minutes a meeting wondering who's supposed to pay the tax and who's not. We've already done that."

So far this fiscal year, which started July 1 and will end June 30, 1999, the city has collected $169,964.95 in restaurant tax revenue and $96,100.69 in hotel-motel tax revenue.