What the Best Cities Do
How the City of Santa Barbara, CA Turned Tax Administration Into a Revenue Protection Strategy
Webinar
Santa Barbara's finance team modernized tax collections, moved filings and payments online,
and successfully defended a key source of local tax revenue in court…. and won.
Locally controlled taxes pay critical services, but most cities haven't changed their approach to
collecting and administering.
Santa Barbara replaced a manual, check-based process for 16,000+ annual business tax
certificate renewals with an online filing and payment portal, reaching 90% online filing in the
first year and largely eliminating counter traffic and daily mail processing. In parallel, a two-
decade compliance auditing partnership across sales tax, franchise fees, utility user tax, and
business license tax gave the City the data to act when cord-cutting eroded its cable-based UUT
revenue.
Finance Director Keith DeMartini worked to extend the City's existing voter-approved tax to
cover digital streaming services and defended the approach through court cases and appeals.
The resulting decision is binding and set an important precedent for other cities.
In this session DeMartini will share his learnings and recommendations for making tax
administration a more strategic function in government finance.
Speakers
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Mackenzie Putici Webinar Moderator Future B2B
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Keith DeMartini Finance Director City of Santa Barbara
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Christy Cato Revenue Compliance, General Manager Neumo
