Hotels owe Onondaga County more than $326K in room-occupancy taxes, audit says

SYRACUSE — Onondaga County is expecting to receive more than $326,000 in unpaid room occupancy tax revenue from some area hotels.

An audit of the county’s hotel and motel room-occupancy tax (ROT) uncovered the total, the office of Onondaga County Comptroller Matthew Beadnell announced on June 18.

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 hotels had “multiple” compliance issues, per the audit report, which didn’t name any of hotels that owed the tax revenue. 

Of the hotels 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.