Madison County wondering what to do with extra pennies

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Posted 2:34PM on Friday, June 27, 2003

DANIELSVILLE - A local sales tax to support schools lapsed for three months in Madison County, but so many retailers forgot to change their registers that the county ended up with thousands in extra money. Now shoppers in this northeast Georgia county will have to decide whether to bring receipts back to stores to be reimbursed for the accidentally charged tax. The county hopes many people won't, and the windfall will be used on schools. A voter-approved 1 percent sales tax ended March 31 three months before a new five-year, $9 million sales tax was set to begin July 1. That meant the tax rate should have dropped from 7 percent to 6 percent for three months. The Athens Banner-Herald conducted a random survey of a dozen county merchants and found half were charging too much tax. The state Department of Revenue, which collects sales tax from stores and returns it to counties in one monthly check, sent the Madison County School System $22,800 for tax collected in April, even though the sales tax should have ended before then. ``That happens all the time, because as we continue to get collections ... we return the money to the program for which it was intended,'' said Phil Embry, director of the sales tax division of the Department of Revenue. State revenue officials said random audits can't catch every sales tax error, and that it's up to customers to make sure they're not paying too much. Embry said shoppers are likely to ask for a refund only on big-ticket items like cars and furniture, ``but there are people who will go back for 3 cents.'' ``If the retailer refuses to change the rate, the taxpayer can cease doing business with him or call us and we'll explain the rate to the retailer,'' he said. Any leftovers not claimed by shoppers will for toward school improvements, said Assistant Superintendent Mitchell McGhee. The work includes new flooring at some schools and 18 new classrooms at three elementary schools.