By Kathryn Pittman and Andrew Appleby

The Ohio Tax Commissioner determined that billing and collection services were nontaxable debt collection services rather than taxable automatic data processing services. The taxpayer provided a variety of billing and collection services to physicians, health care practitioners and other medical personnel. These services included billing patients and performing collection-related activity, preparing reports related to the status of patient accounts, performing data entry for insurance classification, and printing and mailing billing statements to clients. The Commissioner found that the billing and collection services provided by the taxpayer constituted nontaxable debt collection services, while providing patient reports and performing data entry were taxable automatic data processing services. The Commissioner determined that the charges for providing reports and data entry should be separately stated. The Commissioner also concluded that the fees for printing and mailing the billing statements were subject to tax as sales of tangible personal property. Ohio Tax Comm’r Op. No. 14-0002 (Feb. 4, 2014).