Case Studies

How Santa Barbara, CA Relies on Neumo for Tax Compliance and Auditing

The city has partnered with Neumo for decades on compliance audit services covering sales tax, franchise fees, utility users tax, and business license tax.

Decades-Long Partnership

Santa Barbara has partnered with Neumo for compliance audit services for over two decades.

New Revenue Opportunities

Audit insights feed into the city’s annual budget process to evaluate additional revenue from existing tax sources.

Audit Data Shaping Local Policy

Compliance findings directly inform Santa Barbara’s policy updates and local tax administration initiatives.

The city has done a lot of work with Neumo over the last couple of decades in partnering on compliance audit services. Currently, we use Neumo for auditing sales tax, franchise, utility users tax, and business license tax as well. Those are services that we really rely on the Neumo folks, their expertise and their experience in that field to provide those services for our department. We do not have any in house auditors that specialize in those services.

And so it really is critical that we partner with Neumo, given their staff that have expertise in this area. We really rely on them to do that work for us. And it’s a good partnership because they provide information to us when we ask for it. We use that auditing and compliance information to help us with policy updates and initiatives here locally.

And that also feeds into our annual budget process to determine if we can potentially generate more revenue from our existing tax sources. So my message to my counterparts in other cities across California, first and foremost, is consult with your city attorney. Your city attorney truly is your best friend when it comes to utilizing the tools that are available to you in your municipal code as the tax administrator.

Is your municipal code up-to-date? Is it modern? Do you think that your tax is written in such a way where you can initiate audits for streaming services for your locally controlled utility user tax? Those are all questions that you should analyze and answer before proceeding with audits. Definitely leveraging your tax compliance auditors, such as Neumo, is something that we did here locally in Santa Barbara and that worked out well for us.

And then not being afraid to do what is in the municipal code as the responsibility as the tax administrator. The work we do and the work that we continue to improve on cannot be done without continuing to focus on technology solutions. So partnering with companies like Neumo and experts in the field that can provide systems and other solutions for us to improve our services to the residents of Santa Barbara.