LMA Notice: Legal Options for Recovering Unpaid Occupational License Tax

The Louisiana Municipal Association has released information detailing the processes by which municipalities can address businesses within their jurisdictions that refuse to obtain occupational licenses.

La. R.S. 47:351 provides the municipal tax collector with two options when a taxpayer fails to pay occupational license taxes. The two options, which include appealing for intervention by judicial authority and service of legal notices to assess property are not mutually exclusive and can lead to seizure of owed taxes as well as of “goods, chattels, effects, stocks, securities, bank accounts, evidences of debt, wages, real estate and other forms of property.”

Implications to the municipality vary for each method. For more information, download the LMA's “Occupational License Tax FAQ Bulletin.”