Benton County’s Board of Commissioners voted this week to set up a reserve account to repay funds owed to Hewlett-Packard. The county will pay the company over one million dollars in interest from an earlier tax dispute.
In 2013 Benton County paid HP 7.7 million dollars when a tax court ruled that Oregon's Department of Revenue overvalued their Corvallis campus.
While that decision was being appealed the county was saving up to pay 1.15 million dollars left in interest.
Rick Osborn is with Benton County.
Osborn: “They created that reserve account so that that way they could collect the remainder that we haven’t already saved up to repay Hewlett-Packard from the 52 different taxing districts in the county.”
Those taxing districts include cities as well as fire and school districts. While the initial decision was under appeal the county was barred from paying back the interest. However, in August of this year the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the tax court’s ruling siding with HP.