Indiana reports $206 million tax goof

[salvorhardin]

Oh yay. In addition to the misplaced $300 million discovered last December, now we learn that the state overcharged counties $206 million in "local option income tax" revenues.

So basically, in just the past few months, the Indiana Department of Revenue has made errors that are $6 million greater than the recent Mega Millions lottery prize, or to look at this from another perspective, the combined $506 million in errors (that we know about) represent just about 1.8% of Indiana's $28.3 billion state budget. It might just be me, but errors exceeding half a billion dollars seem somewhat excessive.

State budget officials announced Thursday a programming error cost local units of government $206 million in local option income tax revenues in 2011 and so far this year.

...

"It's unfortunate this error occurred," said State Budget Director Adam Horst. "The most important thing that I believe is to restore confidence in that system, provide as much information as possible in as transparent a way as possible…to try to build up that trust and give them the best information available for planning purposes."

It was the second major error discovered in the Department of Revenue in the past six months. In December, Gov. Mitch Daniels announced the state had found $320 million in misplaced corporate tax revenue.

At that time Democrats called for an independent audit of the system but Daniels and GOP legislative leaders refused.

Link: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120405/NEWS07/120409761