BRENTWOOD 鈥 The city of Brentwood will pay St. 亚洲无码 County $1.4 million this month to resolve a dispute that has carried over from the county鈥檚 bungled distribution of as much as $7 million in sales tax proceeds two years ago.
The agreement resolves the last issue left since a clerical error affected the county鈥檚 distribution of revenue from its 1% sales tax in 2022. It resulted in Brentwood being overpaid and other municipalities being shorted tax revenue they were owed.
鈥淚鈥檓 glad we can close that chapter and move on,鈥 Mayor Dave Dimmit said Wednesday in an interview.
The county and Brentwood agreed on the amount, which is about $200,000 less than what the county had originally estimated Brentwood owed.
The $1.4 million from Brentwood will be put into the county鈥檚 general fund, said Doug Moore, a spokesman for County Executive Sam Page.
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鈥淲e agreed this was the best number based on the review from both Brentwood and St. 亚洲无码 County,鈥 Moore said.
County tax revenue is shared by the county and 88 municipalities monthly under a state-prescribed formula. Retail giants like Brentwood send a portion of their proceeds to other cities and the county鈥檚 unincorporated area. 鈥淧ool鈥 cities, which include cities as large as Chesterfield, University City and Wildwood, split the revenue based on population. Retailers collect the tax and send it to the Missouri Department of Revenue. The state sends the proceeds to the county, which calculates how much to send to cities each month.
Brentwood alerted the county in June 2022 that it was being overpaid, but the county continued overpaying the city, not stopping until mid-October of 2022.
By then, Brentwood estimated it had received as much as $7 million in overpayments. It immediately returned $5.4 million to the county in 2023 so the county could give other cities their missed tax proceeds.
The county then paid $2.7 million in missed proceeds to dozens of other municipalities. The payments ranged from as much as $532,720 to Fenton to as little as $4 to Woodson Terrace.
But the county estimated Brentwood owed another $1.6 million to the county from the bungled payments. Brentwood, however, said it wanted to verify the amount asked for the county to substantiate its calculation, Dimmit said.
The two parties eventually agreed the city would pay $1.4 million to resolve the outstanding balance. The Brentwood Board of Aldermen approved the settlement Monday.
County officials have blamed an employee who had recently retired for the error, which they said overwrote Brentwood鈥檚 unique code in its data system, which gives every municipality its own code. Page, county executive, later moved to automate the monthly tax disbursement as a result of the error.
Moore said Wednesday the county is testing the new automated software for use starting in January, when the county鈥檚 new fiscal year begins.