Editor’s note: To fully understand this story, it might be helpful to read The Bentonville Bulletin’s article from August, where we detail how these sales tax rebates work and why the City of Bentonville is in a financial pinch this year.

In Bentonville, city leaders are dealing with a budget crunch triggered by the redemption of an unprecedented amount of sales tax rebates.

From her base in Tontitown, about 20 miles away, Marisha Gardisser is helping businesses claim even more.

To encourage economic development, many business expenses over $2,500 qualify for sales tax rebates under state law. The rebate applies only to city and county sales tax on the purchase amount exceeding $2,500.

For the City of Bentonville, these rebates have always been a bit of a nuisance. Businesses are charged sales tax at the point of sale, and have 12 months to claim rebates, which inserts uncertainty into financial planning. The state government collects the tax and administers the rebates, so city leaders don’t have much information on what’s coming down the line.

This year, the nuisance turned into a true problem, with an estimated $15 million in sales tax rebates triggering a hiring freeze and other budget cutbacks.

Walmart is responsible for about 60% of the rebates being claimed in Bentonville this year, according to city finance leaders.

The other 40% come from the kinds of businesses that can benefit from the rebate services that Gardisser offers.

So far this year, salestaxrebate.com, the business Gardisser has run with a partner for about a year, has submitted $971,000 on behalf of small and medium-sized businesses in Northwest Arkansas, she said.

The salestaxrebate.com website outlines the value proposition: businesses share their invoices, and she combs through the details to find rebate opportunities.

Since she works on a commission of accepted rebates, no client ever leaves with less money than they had before. It’s a win-win situation for her clients, who are largely Arkansas-based contractors.

“This could be a huge amount of money that they're potentially just leaving on the table because they don't know about it,” she said.

The company’s specific niche is builders and contractors. For them, materials are a huge chunk of expenses.

If a contractor makes $300,000 worth of eligible purchases in Bentonville, Gardisser can get them back $9,000 (minus her fees). The larger the amount of eligible purchases, the larger the client’s checks.

For Gardisser, who previously worked in banking, the work is incredibly fulfilling. She described the feeling of recently delivering a check to a business that very much needed it.

“They're like, we have been needing to buy a trailer and haven't been able to, but today, because you brought this check, we're going to be able to go buy that trailer to help our business in a way that we've needed to do for months but couldn't,” she said.

Gardisser said that many businesses don’t know there is a wide swath of eligible expenses that can qualify for the rebates — but more and more are asking her to look for opportunities.

She provides a robust service, reaching out to clients’ vendors if needed for additional documentation. By working full-time on sales tax rebates, she’s developed an in-depth knowledge of the state’s requirements.

“We see what gets rejected on a daily basis by the state, and so we fine-tune when we're going through invoices, and try to get ahead of something being rejected before it would be rejected,” she said.

She also coaches businesses to think strategically about invoices.

“If you're gonna have three or four deliveries from the same supplier in one week, and they're all gonna be, let's just say, $1,000 — obviously you can't get the rebate on the $1,000. But if you have four times $1,000 and get them all the same day on the same invoice, you can get a rebate on that,” she said.

While this year’s rebates were unexpectedly large for several reasons, in a normal year the rebates still add up. However, it would not be accurate to say they’re trending upward so far. They’ve hovered around $7 million, with some peaks and valleys, in recent years.

Patrick Johndrow, city finance director, is in charge of adjusting budgets in response to the rebates. How does he feel about Gardisser’s work?

“Do it, it's awesome,” he said.

Expanding further, he said, “It's economic development. It's what it's intended to do … The more people that are out there telling people about it, they start thinking about it. They start thinking like that, and they start investing more in capital, which invests in our community.”

Johndrow’s quarrel, throughout the fallout of the unprecedented amount of rebates, has never been with small businesses claiming them. It’s been with the process itself, and the fact that the state doesn’t chip in any of its revenue to support this economic development program.

One way to fix the unpredictability of the existing system is to simply not charge sales tax on the eligible purchases at point of sale, Johndrow suggested. This is how things already work for some nonprofit organizations in the state that are tax-exempt.

Under the rebate program that salestaxrebate.com helps with, the city and county sales tax is refunded, but the state sales tax is not.

“I would love for the state to participate,” Johndrow said. “I think the 3% rebate is excellent, but the only people that are participating are the county and the cities. I think the state should jump in.”

For her part, after reading The Bentonville Bulletin’s previous article, Gardisser came to a similar conclusion.

“It is weird that the state doesn't share any of theirs,” Gardisser said. “It would be nice if it was shared, I think.”