City’s share of DataMax collections more than $8,000 so far

By Melinda J. Overstreet / Glasgow News 1
Glasgow Councilman Wendell Honeycutt provided an update this week to his fellow Finance Committee members on the effort to find companies who had not paid for a business license to operate in the city or the required occupational taxes. The firm contracted to work on this endeavor, DataMax, has rounded up 22 companies that now have business licenses and have begun to pay the appropriate city taxes in less than a year, he said.
“The city’s collected a total of $16,073.30, of which the city gets half of that amount,” said Honeycutt, who chairs the committee. “So, it’s working. … Terry, that was a good idea. Thank you for championing that.”
He was speaking to Councilman Terry Bunnell. Honeycutt said after the meeting that it was Bunnell’s idea, and he brought the company to the city government’s attention. Honeycutt said DataMax has a list of companies that routinely do business with certain other companies or types of companies, so they know “who should be there,” so that list is compared with the ones for which the city already has licenses, and they go from there.
Bunnell said that half of the collections from the newly licensed entities go to DataMax for the first two years, then all the city after that.
“It’s just a way to increase revenue,” he said.
Aside from those two, Councilwoman Chasity Lowery was the other voting member present Tuesday, with Councilman Freddie Norris absent.
The committee members agreed that unless something unexpected comes up before then, the October regular meeting would be cancelled and the Nov. 15 one would be next after that.
Brandon Kerney, occupational tax and alcoholic beverage control administrator for the city, said the following day, that the company is allowed to collect up to five years’ unpaid amounts, so much of what has been collected so far is past due amounts being caught up.
“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said.
The city had considered doing something like this a few years ago and officials had asked around among some other municipalities about their experiences with it, and they were mixed.
“So at that time, we just didn’t pursue it,” Kerney said, but then Bunnell became aware of DataMax, and discussions resumed.
The contract started Nov. 15, 2021.
“Other than potential from negative taxpayers’ feedback …, there’s really no drawback to it. They’re doing all the work and they’re finding money we hadn’t found and we might not ever find, so there’s really nothing to lose, and we haven’t had any negative blowback,” Kerney said.
If any of the companies object to being included in the collections effort, it’s in the contract that DataMax is the one they have to deal with on that, he said.