Some South Carolina lawmakers say the South Carolina Department of Revenue (SCDOR) is making its own rules on what is taxable and what is not. Small business owners are claiming they are suffering, and some are closing their businesses as a result of additional taxes. Adrienne Fairwell with the DOR responded to Senator Glenn McConnell’s proposal to protect taxpayers, requiring the DOR to go through a process to tax.
Our response is that it is always the department’s goal to implement the intentions of the General Assembly, and when concerns are brought to our attention, we try to address those.
McConnell says the Revenue Department is working in reverse interest of the state, but Fairwell says they do their best.
“What tax laws are created those are the tax laws that we do our best to carry out,” says Fairwell.
Some business owners are wondering and questioning what rules the DOR is going by to tax certain businesses, which Senator McConnell is opposed to.
When you say what rules are used to tax a business that simply speaks toward employment tax, employee withholding individual income, it just depends. So, it’s not just a set number of rules, so to speak, that one would follow. It depends on what tax type you are talking about because the department administers 32 different types of taxes.
As for McConnell’s Taxpayer Protection Act, Fairwell says they will follow the guidelines the General Assembly sets in place.
That would be taken up in the Legislature, in the General Assembly. It’s not the Department of Revenue’s job to take that up. That’ll be taken up in the General Assembly, and whatever they require of us, we certainly will do.
The General Assembly returns to Columbia in January for the next session.
