The annual outcry over the city of Savannah’s antiquated business licensing process is at full throat.
Next year, city officials hope, the din will be much quieter.
Savannah’s revenue department is transitioning to a new software system that should eliminate much of the paperwork local businesses fill out — by hand — each year as part of renewing their business tax certificates and paying their taxes. The new software will replace a 20-year-old system and works with an online platform.
“This is a massive project, and we’re getting there. The plan is to have that in place by June 1,” city spokesman Bret Bell said. “We’re trying to break free from the 20th century.”
The business receipts updates are just one phase of a larger software conversion within the revenue department. The city offered taxpayers the ability to pay property taxes online last year before turning its attention to business receipts. The next phase will be in modernizing its utility payments process.
“There will be a collective hallelujah when we get that site up,” Bell said of the utility payment website.
Meanwhile, the development services department initiated an “e-track” system last year that allows for electronic filing and tracking of business permits and the inspections process.
“The primary goal right now is to make the city more business friendly,” Bell said.
The modernization is long overdue, business leaders say. Filling out the fistful of paperwork required to renew the business tax certificate has been compared to doing your taxes the old-fashion way — without an accountant, a computer or even a calculator.
The forms include the prior year’s reporting and estimates for the year ahead. The stack also includes zoning documents and forms verifying citizenship for the business owner and employees. The citizenship forms require notarization.
And the business owner often has to fill out the same information year after year, even though Bell said the forms are supposed to be “pre-populated” with much of the basic info.
Consistency and communication are issues the city is grappling with, local businessman Robert Donlon said. Donlon is on the executive board of Savannah SCORE, a nonprofit organization that offers counseling services to small businesses.
New businesses face a particularly frustrating process, according to Donlon. Something that should take less than half a day is often protracted by a lack of guidance from city staff.
“They get in a back-and-forth deal because the city doesn’t give them much direction,” Donlon said. “Some end up making four or five trips downtown to get everything they need, bouncing between the municipal building and zoning commission and the state office.
“The funny thing is, if somebody who wants to start a business goes online, the complete package is there on the website. But it’s not that easy at the municipal building and the folks there don’t send you online to get the information.”
The modernization of the system should help. Business leaders hope the upgrades will also make it easier for the city to collate and analyze the information. Trends in tax receipts, employer and employee counts and zoning uses would be valuable data in economic development and forecasting.
The data must be in electronic form to be efficiently used and would be “very helpful,” according to Armstrong Atlantic State University economist Michael Toma, who produces the quarterly Economic Monitor newsletter.
The city recognizes the value of the information, Bell said, but remains focused on the modernization of business processes.
“We’re just not set up to input that data right now,” Bell said.
The city doesn’t keep some of the most valuable information. The citizenship documents contain the city of Savannah header but are passed on to the state. The state, in turn, forwards the forms to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a spokeman with the Georgia Department of Labor.
The paperwork is part of the E-Verify system set up by DHS to ensure companies employ only U.S. citizens or foreigners with the necessary authorization.
The city is unclear about its role as it relates to the E-Verify forms once the other business license renew documents move online.