DELTONA, Fla. – City leaders in Deltona are working through litigation with the IRS after the agency gave the city a nearly $1 million fine.
“It’s in pending litigation obviously. The city hasn’t released any information because I personally just learned about this last week,” said Mayor Santiago Avila Jr.
Avila told News 6 commissioners were individually called into an emergency meeting where they were told what happened.
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“I will tell you the city doesn’t owe a million dollars in back taxes. That’s not what this is about. The IRS wants to penalize the city for misfiled forms from 2016 to 2019,” he said.
Avila said some city leaders had hoped to get more answers before the topic was brought to public light to try and avoid confusion and chaos.
However, on Thursday night at a special commission meeting for another topic, the Vice Mayor, JodyLee Storozuk, brought it up, but was quickly shut down by other city leaders because it “was not on the agenda.”
“It should not be on the taxpayers’ backs to fix this problem and pay this when city employees screwed up. Somebody should be held accountable and I’m sorry, jobs should be at risk for this,” said Storozuk.
He told News 6 that he believes others in the city have known.
“I talked to the finance department and the one person said I’ve been working on this for two years. Well, if you’ve been working on this for two years, you still didn’t tell us,” Storozuk said.
The officials said the misfiled form was a 1095-C, which has to do with employer insurance and coverage.
The city interim manager hired a lawyer to handle the litigation.
Avila said they are still working to figure out why this information was just brought to their attention and who dropped the ball on the forms.
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