For the week of April 2 - 8, 2003

Ketchum LOT not as low as thought

Sun Valley overpaid last year’s taxes

---

"I guess the bottom line is, it looks to us that, instead of having an LOT that’s down in the order of 19 to 20 percent, it might be half of that."

— RON LeBLANC, Ketchum city administrator

---

By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Ketchum’s financial gurus are working this week to correct a city financial report that showed Sun Valley Co. had overpaid its taxes during the winter of 2002.

"It looks to us like the Sun Valley corporation overpaid their taxes in 2002 for about a four-month period," said Ketchum City Administrator Ron LeBlanc. "It bloated the receipts that we reported in January, February and March in 2002, so we have to adjust those."

For those keeping score, that means the city’s current local option tax collections on general sales for the aforementioned months are not as low as first anticipated, because the city had been using the "bloated" 2002 receipts as a basis for comparison.

Last week, the city quickly retracted a report that included February LOT receipts, but a prior report including January showed the city’s retail receipts down 24.82 percent.

"I guess the bottom line is, it looks to us that, instead of having an LOT that’s down in the order of 19 to 20 percent, it might be half of that," LeBlanc said.

Interestingly, the override coincides with a local option tax conundrum in the city of Sun Valley, where Sun Valley Co. paid about $28,000 in back taxes last December. Because the back taxes were added to the city of Sun Valley’s December spreadsheets, that month appeared to show a 19 percent increase over the previous year.

Ketchum employees are working out the details of the new LOT mystery this week.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.