Standardized Occupational License Tax Forms Available

Standardized Occupational License Tax Forms

Download the forms from the Secretary of State's Office 

            On July 1, 2017, Kentucky finalizes the transition to a standardized occupational license tax forms for business reporting. Instead of trying to locate and select between different forms for over 200 taxing districts, businesses will now be able to use standardized forms to file with the local tax districts in which they owe taxes.

            HB 277 of the 2012 Kentucky General Assembly established a process to phase in standardized forms for occupational license tax reporting. The legislation was a compromise between the business community and the local government associations to make filing easier for businesses while also ensuring that cities maintain taxing independence. The legislation was implemented in several phases, culminating in the requirement for local governments to accept approved standardized forms by July 1, 2017. 

As the first step in implementing the legislation, the Secretary of State gathered all occupational license tax ordinances and forms from tax districts throughout the state. The ordinances and forms of each local taxing jurisdiction were placed on the Secretary of State’s website in November of 2012. Businesses have since been able to download these documents from the Secretary of State’s website, instead of having to contact various tax districts to access them. The Secretary of State maintains updated ordinances and forms as well as a spreadsheet of all occupational license tax rates by city and district. These rates are in a readily searchable format on the website, Microsoft Excel.

In the next phase, the Secretary of State worked with tax preparers and local tax administrators to create standard forms for tax districts that collect taxes for a single district. This single reporting form, complete with instructions, was codified in an administrative regulation in November 2016 and is available on the Secretary of State’s website at http://app.sos.ky.gov/occupationaltax/ as form OL-S Single Tax District, Occupation License Fee Return. And on March 3, 2017, the Dual Tax District Occupational License Fee Return was developed by the Secretary of State and codified in an administrative regulation, with instructions. It too is available on the Secretary of State’s website linked above. There are six districts effected by this change, which are Boyle County/Danville, Daviess County/Owensboro, Henderson County/City of Henderson, Jessamine County/Nicholasville, Rowan County/Morehead, and Taylor County/Campbellsville.

All tax districts that collect for either a single district or dual districts are required to accept the forms effective July 1, 2017.

For those tax districts that collect multi-district occupational taxes, the Secretary of State’s Office is working with stakeholders on the development of another form or forms. Until such a form or forms are adopted formally through the regulatory process, however, businesses reporting in these jurisdictions will likely want to continue using the multi-district return forms developed by local authorities in Boone, Kenton, Campbell, and Scott counties. KLC will make sure to update our members when there are additional developments on this work.