Taxing
Members of the Oklahoma Education Association, through their national union, are financing a ballot measure that could raise the taxes of Oklahomans by as much as $1.7 billion over three years.
At the same time, OEA and its local in Norman are suing the school district on behalf of nine teachers for withholding $355.12 in payroll taxes from their $5,000 national certification bonus from the state. Evidently the union “also has filed similar lawsuits against Moore, Putnam City, Yukon, Muskogee school districts, with others in the works.”
Until 2008, a flat bonus of $5,000 was mailed directly from the state to the teachers. Then the IRS intervened, ruling Social Security and Medicare tax (FICA) needed to be withheld. For the past two years, the state sent the $5,000 bonus to the school district for each nationally certified teacher, plus an additional amount to cover FICA. This year, the state only sent $5,000.
“That’s all I received,” said Brenda Burkett, chief financial officer for the Norman school district. “I just purely received the money and paid out what they gave me — even if I had all the money in the world, it still isn’t my district’s obligation to pay that employer cost for the state department.”
Burkett sent an e-mail to teachers in February explaining the situation.
“It was Sanskrit to me,” said high school teacher Betsy Ballard. ”I have no ability to understand financial vocabulary that way. I’m a fine arts and language person.”
The Norman district has filed a motion to dismiss. The case is scheduled to be heard next month.
