By next month, the Pennsylvania Legislature may be ready to move on a bill that would consolidate the number of earned income tax collectors in the state, on the belief that the current system is confusing for employers and fraught with $237 million in losses and inefficiencies.

The proposals would create 66 new countywide bureaus charged with collecting earned income taxes and redistributing the money to each of the cities, boroughs and school districts within. Right now, there are more than 560 doing a job that arguably could be done better by a few dozen.

But a trade group called the Pennsylvania Earned Income Tax Officers, Administrators and Collectors Association opposes the changes, favoring another bill, House bill 1458. That bill consolidates the number of earned income tax collectors along school district boundaries (501 of them) and not county lines.

Either way, proponents say the changes have been a long time coming -- similar bills were introduced in the 2005-2006 legislative session to no avail, and the issue has been debated and researched since Tom Ridge was governor. But there's no guarantee the bills will pass this time, as the Legislature is presently consumed with the eternally confounding issue of property tax relief.

But this set of bills -- the Senate's version is in the appropriations committee, while the House version is in finance -- is a bit different than the proposal that was floated two years ago, and should be more palatable to stakeholders, such as school districts and tax collectors, which historically have been leery of consolidation efforts.

The current system is a remnant of William Penn's colonial Pennsylvania, said Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie, the lead sponsor of the Senate version. "The government that's closest to the citizenry is best," she said. "That's a cultural heritage that's very difficult to change." But she wants to, at least on this issue.

She received a memo on Friday asking her if she'd be willing to discuss the bill in caucus meetings tomorrow. If that goes well, the Senate may move the bill out of appropriations and onto the floor for a vote.

Rep. David Levdansky, D-Forward, sponsored the house version and said the consolidation would help recoup the $237 million that is lost either because it goes uncollected, or because it "seeps" out of the system though redundancies and wasted effort. (For example, he said, he receives tax forms and bills from the wrong jurisdictions.) Previous estimates had set the lost revenue at $100 million, on top of the almost $2 billion collected statewide.

"Obviously what that means is that the tax burden is shifted onto everybody else," through property taxes and other levies, Mr. Levdansky said. Business groups, he said, are supportive of the bills, because they would streamline the process -- no more withholding earned income taxes from employee paychecks for dozens of different municipalities.

Brian Jensen, a vice president with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, said the restructuring would benefit taxpayers, business and the collecting districts -- especially the last of the three. "It's easier on districts receiving the money," he said. "They'll get their money faster," or they'll get more of what they're due, since it isn't lost in the system.

The tax collectors think there is the potential for making a confusing situation even worse -- the new taxing districts would create collection "committees" composed of one delegate for each taxing district. In Allegheny County, for example, they say the committee would have 170 members on it.

Under all of the bills, the law applies only to earned income taxes, meaning property taxes and other local levies would continue to be collected by local officials.