Tax amnesty nets state $63 million

More than 4,700 applications were received for the amnesty.
By JEFF ORTEGA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
COLUMBUS -- Ohio's six-week tax amnesty program conducted earlier this year has netted the state about $63 million in taxes owed to the state, surpassing previous estimates, state officials say.
The Ohio Department of Taxation said Thursday it received more than 4,700 applications for the amnesty, which ran from Jan. 1 to Feb. 15, with some applications covering several years and several different taxes.
State officials had projected a gain in tax revenue of $10 million from the venture, the second such amnesty conducted in the state's history.
Ohio Tax Commissioner William W. Wilkins attributed the gain to a $1 million advertising blitz that included television, radio and print and an outreach to business and tax professional groups statewide.
"The citizens of Ohio will benefit from the additional revenue collected, and those who came forward now have a clean slate within Ohio's tax system," Wilkins said in a statement.
Taxes covered
The amnesty program, which was authorized in the two-year $51.2 billion state budget that took effect in July, covered employer withholding taxes; state sales and use taxes; corporate franchise taxes; personal income taxes; pass-through entity taxes; personal-property taxes; individual and school-district income taxes and employer school district withholding taxes.
During the six-week amnesty period, tax scofflaws were able to turn in payments for unreported or underreported tax delinquencies with no state penalties and one-half of the interest charges. Tax delinquents who participated in the amnesty had to make full tax payment during the amnesty period, the state said.
The amnesty covered only the tax delinquents that the state was unaware of and didn't cover those with current state tax judgments pending against them or those taxpayers under state audit.
Tax department officials were still compiling statistics on the amnesty, but said corporate-franchise, personal-income and sales and use taxes appeared to account for about 90 percent of the amnesty proceeds.
"Those are the three major business taxes," said Vaughn Lombardo, Ohio's tax program administrator.
Lombardo said the state has conducted only one tax amnesty program before, a three-month reprieve from mid-October 2001 to mid-January 2002, which netted about $48 million for state coffers.