Did You Do Your Taxes OnLine?

Some Mass. residents get repeat tax bills

By Associated Press, 4/30/2003 01:17


BOSTON (AP) As many as 5,000 Massachusetts residents have received bills for taxes they have already paid, a problem that the state Revenue Department is blaming on two private companies.

The tax preparation software used by H&R Block and Drake Software is incompatible with the state's own software, according to a Revenue Department spokesman.

The H&R Block and Drake software asks taxpayers who owe the state money whether they want the payment withdrawn from their bank account.

Those who answered ''no'' and instead chose to pay by mailing a check were treated by the state computer system as if they had refused to pay their taxes, department spokesman Tim Connolly told The Boston Globe.

There have been no problems with 13 other tax preparation software programs approved by the state because they have a box that taxpayers can check to inform the state that they are sending a check.

The Revenue Department said the glitch has effected between 4,000 and 5,000 of the roughly 1 million taxpayers who file electronically.

The department sent out the erroneous bills on April 16 and 18, and is telling taxpayers when they call with a question to disregard the bill if they have already paid their taxes. The agency has not sent letters to the people who were sent the erroneous bills, nor has it posted a notice of the issue on its Web site.

''What we have been doing is handling people as they call in, explaining to them and apologizing,'' Connolly said.

Tim Hubbs, the executive vice president of Drake Software, said the mistake has caused stress among some of his company's clients.

''We are very concerned about it, and we are trying to do what we can to try and communicate to our preparers to do what they can to be prepared to help their customers,'' he said.

Connolly blamed the glitch on the companies. The Revenue Department gave specific criteria to the software companies for developing their programs, and then reviewed those programs, he said.

''This is definitely H&R Block's problem and Drake's problem,'' he said. ''It's out of our hands, a software issue with an outside vendor.''

But a spokeswoman for Kansas City-based H&R Block said the glitch may be the state's fault.

''We operate in 49 other states. Nobody else is reporting a problem, and that question was on every form,'' spokeswoman Denise Sposato said.

The state this year discontinued its own Internet tax filing system and instead referred taxpayers to the 15 private companies approved to handle tax returns.

The plan was designed to encourage more people to file electronically and cut back on the amount of paper returns the agency has to deal with. More than a third of the state's approximately 3 million taxpayers filed electronically this year, a record high, the Revenue Department said.

Boston Globe OnLine Edition 5/01/03