Fulton County Ohio Media

From time to time, questions arise surrounding the Village of Swanton’s use of RITA, whose services the Village began using in July of 2009, almost 15 years ago.  What is it?  Is it an additional tax on Swanton residents?  Why do we use it and what does it do for us?  Below are some answers provided by the RITA website (www.ritaohio.com) and Swanton’s Director of Finance, Holden Benfield (fiscal@villageofswanton.us).

RITA Website: The Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) provides services to collect income tax for municipalities in the State of Ohio.  RITA’s Board of Trustees is authorized to administer and enforce the income tax laws of each of the participating municipalities.  However, each municipal corporation retains its right to administer and enforce its own income tax laws concurrently with the Board.

RITA offers comprehensive tax collection from registration through litigation.

The Regional Income Tax Agency, known as “RITA” was formed in 1971 to administer the income tax ordinance of any Ohio municipality (city or village in Ohio) that joins the Agency through the Regional Council of Governments (RCOG).  Although not every Ohio municipality is a RCOG member, currently nearly 400 cities and villages (approximately 50% of Ohio municipalities with an income tax) utilize RITA to handle their municipal income tax collection and enforcement efforts.

Mr. Benfield: “It is Not a tax itself (this is a misconception we hear a lot). It handles the collection of our village income tax, which they then return to us in bulk monthly.  If we did not have RITA, the Municipal Office would be doing it ourselves so there’s no additional cost to the individual’s taxes.”

“For the service we get out of it, the cost to the village comes out to around the cost of a single full-time employee on an annual basis (factoring in things like benefits).  This cost gets us not only the collection processing, but has largely increased our actual collection rate opposed to when we used to do it in-house, and reduced delinquency in taxes.  For when someone is delinquent for any reason, RITA also handles both outreach and any necessary legalities surrounding the attempts at collection.  The cost is relative to how much we take in in a given month, so it generally is not set in stone.”

“More than anything, RITA reduces the overall load on our office. If we didn’t have RITA, we would likely need to add an additional staff member dedicated to that task.  Doing this would increase the strain on the office, and add more overhead and legal fees to the process which would likely end up exceeding the cost of RITA altogether.  RITA has a system that we’re able to access that lets us get delinquent reports on demand. So, we can see how much is still outstanding and how much has been reclaimed at any time.”