Forest City Regional addresses tax collection change

BY CAITLIN HEANEY

Times-Shamrock Writer

The Forest City Regional School District will wait another year to participate in a countywide collection of earned-income taxes.

The school board approved a resolution Tuesday night that allows the district to continue having GH Harris of Dallas collect earned-income tax from the six municipalities the district comprises.

The switch comes after the state passed Act 32 as a way of streamlining earned-income tax collection at the county level. The district could have switched to Susquehanna County’s collector, effective in January but, with the resolution, will delay that change until January 2012 instead, district business manager Kathleen Kaczka said.

The Forest City Regional School District spans parts of Lackawanna, Susquehanna and Wayne counties but will participate in Susquehanna County’s collection because most of its population lives there, Kaczka said.

Susquehanna County could select its earned-income tax collector by the end of the month, Kaczka said, but with no one currently in place, she did not want the district to rush into switching.

The delay also will give the district more time to educate employers and employees about the change, Kaczka added.

“Legally there’s different motions and resolutions and things that have to happen,” she said. “For us to do it in a month, it’s just going to be too time consuming to try and push it through and get in done.”

The district underwent a similar change a few years ago, when it moved from having six earned-income tax collectors among its municipalities to using just one collector for the entire school district.

“There’s going to be some growing pains, but I think in the end it’s going to work,” Kaczka said.