JWB Property Management has 30 days to submit a final order that exempts the company from paying $4,001.80 in outstanding business tax receipt fees in Jacksonville Beach. City Clerk staff discovered over 100 rental properties were not in compliance during an internal audit earlier this year.
Special Magistrate Brenna Durden addressed the alleged delinquency during an Aug. 26 hearing. David Migut, city attorney for Jacksonville Beach, presented the case after an internal audit revealed that the property management company had not registered 104 properties as required by the city.
Durden ordered that both parties submit proposed final orders for her consideration before she made her final ruling.
Jacksonville Beach requires any business operating within the city to obtain a business tax receipt. According to city code, the requirement applies to both short-term and long-term rentals.
Attorney Zach Miller said JWB should not be held responsible for local business tax requirements because the company is not the party conducting the taxable business. He challenged the city's attempt to impose fees on the property management company rather than the property owner itself.
Miller asked Michaela O'Banion, an operational support specialist who helps facilitate the city's business tax receipt program, to identify the nature of business conducted at the specific addresses where the city sought to impose a business tax receipt. He also questioned whether an HVAC company completing repairs in exchange for payment at a location was conducting business as defined by the city code.
"How is that different from managing the property?" Miller said.
Durden pointed out for the record that the addresses in question were provided by the company as rentals they managed in Jacksonville Beach.
JWB Property Management manages 143 residential rental properties in Jacksonville Beach, according to O'Banion. Only 39 of those properties were registered with the city.
"The city initiated additional correspondence regarding 104 properties remaining to be registered," Migut said. "The city clerk determined that the outstanding fees that needed to be paid totaled $4,001.80 which were due Sept. 30, 2025."
O'Banion recalled under oath that she contacted the company in April after discovering a single unregistered property while verifying compliance for fire inspections. Andrea White, an executive assistant with JWB Property Management who manages the company's short-term rentals, provided a spreadsheet that listed all of the rental properties managed in Jacksonville Beach.
"I went through the spreadsheet and that's when I found that most of the addresses were not registered for a local business tax receipt," O'Banion said, adding that the city requested clarification on the number of short-term versus long-term rentals but did not receive a "clear response."
Deputy City Clerk Jodilynn Byrd helped cross-check the list for compliance and found that only 39 properties had business tax receipts. JWB has since received business tax receipts to bring the company's short-term rentals into compliance. A demand letter and notice of hearing were issued for the outstanding long-term rentals, O'Banion said.
City code requires an annual fee of $79.20 for up to 36 units for such uses as hotels, rooming houses and camps and an additional $2.20 for each additional unit. Migut said the fee schedule applies to any property operated either as a short-term or long-term rental in a single property or multiple apartment buildings or townhomes.
A rooming house is defined by Section 15-1 of the city code as "every house or any place or location kept, used, or maintained as advertised or held out to the public to be a place where living quarters, sleeping or housekeeping accommodations are supplied for pay to transient guests or tenants in one or adjoining buildings."
Migut said when a specific provision and a general provision govern the same matter but conflict, as with the classification of "rooming house" in this case, the specific provision prevails over the general provision.
"I contend that because rooming house is defined in Chapter 15, the very first sentence says the following definitions shall prevail," he said. "I believe that is subject to a business tax receipt. The city is not prohibited from going after the agent of an owner."
