Audit: Onondaga County is owed more than $326K in room-occupancy tax revenue from hotels

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Some area hotels owe Onondaga County room occupancy tax revenue totaling more than $326,000.

That’s the finding of an audit report of Onondaga County’s hotel and motel room-occupancy tax (ROT) that Onondaga County Comptroller Matthew Beadnell released Tuesday.

The report, conducted in 2018, covered 51 hotels and motels for the period 2016 through 2017.

“Our report found that 33 of the 51 [hotels and motels] examined were not in compliance and Onondaga County is due $326,043,” Beadnell said in a news release. “This is significant revenue for the taxpayers of Onondaga County.”

Several operators had “multiple” compliance issues, per the audit report.

Of the operators that were not in compliance, five underpaid due to incorrect handling of the internet remarketers; 14 didn’t retain proper tax-exempt documentation to support quarterly ROT returns; one was taking the amount of tax collected from its accounting system and backing into its tax due instead of using actual revenue figures from the hotel’s guest system, the report said. In addition, 19 hotels were using incorrect figures to determine their ROT.

The findings were discussed with the management of the individual hotel/motel operators.

The ROT law permits the county to collect a five percent room-rental tax on the per-diem rental charge. In 2016, Onondaga County collected ROT of $6.5 million and in 2017, collected $6.6 million from 110 operators.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

 Photo credit: Onondaga County website