1. How to Use OTC Reports & Resources
2013 OML Conference
Presented By:
Dana Ratcliffe, City of Weatherford - City Treasurer
Breck Buchanan, MBA, City of Tulsa - Treasury Analyst
Davis Puryear, City of Oklahoma City - Assistant City Treasurer

2. Presentation Overview
Oklahoma Taxpayer Access Point (OKTAP)
What is OKTAP
Access & Navigation
Reports
How to use the information
Tulsa
Weatherford

3. What is OKTAP Central Access Point For
Sales & use tax collection details
Permit and taxpayer research
Tax payments
Business Registration

4. OKTAP Access & Navigation
Access and Getting Started
Register with the Oklahoma Tax Commission
Contact Dave Francis, OTC – (405)
Navigation
How to log-in
Accessing each months return
Running reports

5. Reports Account Details – Total sales & use tax collections by COPO
Collection Details – Summary of revenues collected for your municipality by taxpayer
Collection By NAICS Code – Summary of collections by industry
Tax, Penalty, and Interest – Total collections and penalty/interest breakdown by taxpayer
Balance Due – Balances owed from an audit assessment and/or a filed return with no payment
List of Delinquent Taxpayers – Taxpayers who failed to file a report for a two consecutive months
New Sales Tax Permits – All new permits issued during the month
Canceled Sales Tax Permits – Permits canceled during the month
Audit Details – A summary of audits that were assessed for the period

6. Tulsa: Data Analysis Data Analysis Overview How We Use The Data
Sales Tax Permit List
Sales and Use Tax Collections Analysis
Delinquent Listing / Balance Due Listing
Monthly Reports

7. Data Analysis Process Field Inspections Reports Audit Leads Business
OTC Tax Data
COT Treasury Data Repository
Audit Leads
Data Analysis
Our data analysis process begins with the receipt of data from OTC; we then import this data into our data repository, which is currently ACL Analytics. For your city or town, Excel may be the only tool you need. From here we analyze the data, create reports, and facilitate other functions such as business license approvals.
Business
License Approvals
Enforce Municipal Codes

8. Data Analysis Process
Obtain Data
Confidential Report Data – “Old Data”
OkTAP Data - “New Data”
Compile Data
Combine Old and New Data
Can use ACL Analytics, Access, or Excel
Reports
Create
Visualize the data in a meaningful way
Excel is a great tool for this
Take Action
Make decisions and take corrective actions
Here is an overview of the analysis process. It’s important to review collections up to 36 months from your most recent report. Pre-OkTAP or “old” data is in text format and can be pulled from the OTC’s old confidential reports site.

9. Sales Tax Permit Analysis
Check permits for proper COPO registration
OkTAP:
Retailer Permit Search / Sales Tax Permit Lookup
Pull lists of permits by:
Name, Street, City, State, ZIP or COPO
Only displays up to 250 results per search
Check streets/addresses that border your city
One problem we watch out for is vendors within our city registered with an incorrect COPO (City / County Code). This is a problem because a vendor may be located in your municipality, making sales, and due to incorrect registration, unknowingly remit sales tax collections to the wrong COPO. In other words, their collections simply get paid to the wrong City. Several tools are available to verify that permits are registered properly. Two tools I’ll briefly discuss are the OkTAP sales tax permit lookup system and batchgeo.com. The OkTAP tool is helpful in that you can pull up registered permits in your COPO, and other COPOs, based on name, zip, address. For example, you may have new construction or new vendors occurring near your city limits, are they registered properly?

10. Example of where to access the OkTAP search tool within OkTAP.

11. Example of OkTAP search tool with results displayed.

12. Sales Tax Permit Analysis
Check permits for proper COPO registration
batchgeo.com:
Free tool to map up to 250 addresses at once
A great free tool for mapping addresses is batchgeo.com. Up to 250 addresses can be mapped at a time to see where businesses are located.

13. Example of batchgeo. com results
Example of batchgeo.com results. The circles with numbers indicate how many addresses are located in that general area. Zooming in closer towards any of the circles will reveal more precise address markers.

14. Sales Tax Permit Analysis
Can double check correct COPO / tax rate with OTC Sales / Use tax rate locator:
Sample Address: Tulsa City Hall, 175 E 2nd St, ZIP: 74103
Another way to double check if an address is within city limits or not, as well as what tax rate should be collected by a vendor is by using the OTC Sales / Use tax rate locator. Tulsa City Hall was used as an example, with each step of the process illustrated. As can be seen, a business making sales at City Hall’s address, would charge a total rate of 8.517%.

15. Sales Tax Permit Analysis
Compare registered permits against other data sources:
City of Tulsa Utilities Data (commercial customers)
Building Permit Applications
Special Events Permits
Dun and Bradstreet Business Directories
Comparing the list of registered permits to other data sources may pinpoint other registration errors, and could also lead to discovering unregistered sellers.

16. Delinquent and Balance Due Lists
Combine together:
Delinquent Taxpayer List
Balances Due: Filtered for vendors that are:
Open
Not in collections
Not on a payout plan
Check the list when vendors apply for new or renewed business licenses
Listing is updated monthly
Before issuing business licenses, the delinquent list and balance due list are checked to ensure licenses are not issued to delinquent sellers.

17. Collections Analysis Top-Down Approach
Start: High Level Economic Summary
What is happening on a macro level that may explain collections trends?
Fed Beige Book
Kansas City Fed
State Treasurer: Oklahoma Economic Report
News Reports: CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance
We take a top-down approach to sales tax analysis which helps us explain trends that may be affecting our local vendors now, or in the future.

18. Collections Analysis Regional Sales Tax Collections Summary
Compare this month’s change in collections to:
Other MSA Cities
Other Cities in the State
Next, we compare our collections to other cities and towns in the MSA (Census Bureau Metropolitan Statistical Area) and also to other selected cities in the state. This may help us understand if trends in our sales tax were isolated to us or widespread. (include a report example on next slide)

19. Example of MSA report, sales tax normalized to 1%.

20. Collections Analysis Industry Analysis
What industries had significant changes?
Is the change widespread, or isolated to one or a few vendors?
We then drill down a little further and take a look at the changes that have occurred in the major industries. Again asking if the overall changes in sales and use tax collections are isolated to a few industries or widespread. (Include examples of reports on subsequent slides)

21. Example of sales tax collections by SIC Division
Example of sales tax collections by SIC Division. We currently convert the new OkTAP NAICS codes back to SIC codes designation and to make historical comparisons a bit easier. We also scrub the industry codes for any major errors we catch – i.e. a large exemption refund that is received without an industry code assigned. We may transition to NAICS codes once we have more than a year worth of data from OkTAP.

22. Example of TOP 25 SIC report
Example of TOP 25 SIC report. The majority of our collections are in the top 25, while the majority of any month’s change can usually be explained in the top 10 SICs.

23. Collections Analysis Vendor Analysis
Did any vendors have unusual changes?
Reporting Period Totals: Zero balance, unusually large, unusually small, or negative periods
Unusual prior period adjustments
Can the change be easily explained?
Weather
Refunds
Company Press Releases
Word of Mouth
News Reports
Company SEC Filings
Overview of vendor analysis.

24. Vendor Analysis Tool: Tax Dashboard
Summarize collections data into Excel spreadsheet:
Combine Old (pre OkTAP) and New OkTAP Data with Excel
Summarize by tax filing period
Use conditional formatting to highlight periods with unusual totals
XX% or more below average (yellow)
XX% or more above average (green)
Negative (pink)
Zero (red)
Sparklines (“Trends” below) give a quick glance of totals
Notice the low point?
Scrolling further to the right reveals this to be the 3/2012 tax filing period
This will be sent to the OTC for review
Slide is animated. Example of a tool we use to look for collections / apportionment errors. Also, time permitting, quick demo of an excel spreadsheet that automates merging old and new data together.

25. Final Step Sales and Use Tax Issues
Compile a list of identified issues
Issues list sent monthly for review to Oklahoma Tax Commission Taxpayer Assistance
Primary Contact: Dave Francis

26. Weatherford Revenue Review
Monthly Review
Top 10 Taxpayers
Confirm new businesses are remitting
Review credits and refunds
Our process doesn’t require dedicate staff