Schuylkill treasurer streamlines county hotel tax payment

Online banking makes doing business much more convenient — for payer and payee. During a Schuylkill County Commissioners workshop meeting Wednesday, the board approved establishment of an account created to allow hotel property owners to direct deposit their hotel tax payments.

During the meeting, Treasurer Linda Marchalk said that the county will get the payments faster, and also save money and time spent doing the same work by paper and mail. She explained that an account set up at M&T Bank will be titled Hotel Tax Account.

She credited the county’s internal MIS Department in setting up the electronic system. After the meeting, she said that the link to make payments will be via the county’s website, with an icon Hotel Tax Payment on the main page. Hotel tax collected in July was $55,710.

“With this technology we’ll be more efficient,” she said. “We’ll continue to review the remittances monthly.”

Marchalk also said that during July, the Treasurer’s Office processed 11,800 doe licenses in 13 business days. Numbers aren’t final yet for August, but Marchalk estimated another 5,000 to 7,000 licenses will be processed. The county processing fee is $1, meaning that the work creates about $18,000 in revenue annually for the county, she said.

Marchalk also released the Treasurer’s Report for July. The ending balance for all accounts was $55,475,147. That included $30,718,326 in the general fund; $14,049,697 in other county funds; $3,738,768 in county agencies; $7,278,000 in investments; and $339,788 in worker comp. Revenue from real estate taxes was $1,733,745 and $20,033 in per capita tax.