VIDALIA — Earlier this week, the Concordia Parish School Board joined several Louisiana municipalities in opposing a constitutional amendment proposed by the Louisiana Legislature.

During a regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, the board unanimously approved a resolution opposing all proposed legislation that transfers administration and collection of local sales and use taxes to the Louisiana Department of Revenue in response to the proposed House Bill 57 introduced last month by Dist. 53 State Rep. Tanner Magee, R-Houma.

If approved by voters, House Bill 57 would transfer the task of collecting sales taxes from an array of parish-level agencies to an unspecified central collection agency.

The bill is intended to combat the loss of internet sales taxes as well as provide a simplified and streamlined process of distributing tax dollars throughout the state.

“We don’t think that is a good idea,” said Tom O’Neal, the administrator for the Concordia Parish Department of Revenue and Director of Business Affairs for CPSB.

“We think it’s a very bad idea, as a matter of fact,” O’Neal said. “Through a joint effort, the Louisiana School Board Association, the Police Jury Association, the Sheriff’s Association, the Municipal Association, and the Louisiana Association of Tax Administrators have waged a war to curtail this amendment from ever coming to a vote.”

The Concordia Parish Department of Revenue collects sales taxes for six different parishes, O’Neal said — including East Carroll, Tensas, Concordia Parish, Catahoula, La Salle and Caldwell — and is responsible for dividing them up for their respective school boards, hospital boards and other governing bodies.

O’Neal said he believes having collection agencies closer to home does a better job of getting tax dollars to their allocated agencies faster and more efficiently.

O’Neal also argued that Concordia Parish’s current sales tax rate of 4.75 percent could be reduced to a flat number and cause a loss of tax revenue if placed in the hands of the state.

“We believe it gives us access to our money immediately,” O’Neal said. “We can do a better job simply because we know our local businesses. … There has been some discussion about internet sales, and some people think that if we had a single collector in Baton Rouge, they would do a better job of collecting internet sales tax. I don’t believe that is true. It’s not a very strong argument.”