Pa. sends erroneous forms to taxpayers

Pa. sends erroneous forms to taxpayers

	Published : Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:05 By : Agencies Print this Story

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AFX) - The state Department of Revenue warned hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians that certain tax forms mailed out earlier this month contain erroneous information, as officials scrambled Thursday to print and distribute corrected versions.

The 1099-G and 1099-INT forms report tax refunds and interest received from the state, which many taxpayers need for preparing their federal tax returns for 2006. The erroneous forms contain 2005 tax data.

Department officials said they did not immediately know why the mistake occurred but said they will investigate and vowed to send corrected forms within 15 days.

'I apologize on behalf of the Revenue Department for this mistake,' said Revenue Secretary Gregory C. Fajt.

The department mailed about 900,000 erroneous forms at a cost of more than $120,000. Correcting the error will require sending out an additional 1.2 million forms at a cost of more than $160,000, said department spokesman Steve Kniley.

The corrected mailing will be bigger because it needs to reach people who should not have received a form for 2006, as well as those who should have received one but did not, Kniley said.

'Not everybody who got these needs them,' he said.

For example, many of the initial forms went to taxpayers who received a refund or interest in 2005, but received no payments in 2006 that would be subject to the federal income tax. Those people will receive corrected forms showing a zero balance, Kniley said.

People who received the erroneous forms will be sent new forms bearing 'corrected' labels in red ink. The forms are folded in half for mailing and are about the size of a postcard, Kniley said.

The department planned to begin sending out replacements as soon as each batch is printed.

Officials plan 'an extensive post-mortem' to find out what went wrong and prevent it from happening again, Kniley said.

'Obviously, this is a significant mistake and we are not happy about it,' he said.