Hamilton County soon will start charging the city of Chattanooga a fee for collecting the city’s sales taxes, County Trustee Bill Hullander said Monday.
Hullander said that under the old sales tax agreement, which expires May 23, the county collected sales taxes for free. But he now intends to implement a 1 percent to 2 percent fee. A 2 percent fee would bring in $1 million a year, Hullander said.
That’s nowhere near the $10.5 million the county says it will lose when the agreement expires. The agreement has been used for decades to jointly fund agencies with the city such as the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.
But Hullander said by law he’s going to have to charge the city something.
“If the agreement goes away, I have to do it,” he said.