Thursday, July 26, 2001

VT - Auditor: State to blame for tax mess ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONTPELIER – The Vermont Tax Department should have tested its new computer system more thoroughly before putting it online, says state Auditor Elizabeth Ready.

Testing might have prevented the problems that cropped up with the optical scanners used to read individual tax returns and saved the state the headaches it’s having now trying to correct the flaws in the system.

“A majority of the errors were the result of inadequate testing of the software,” said Ready.

Before this year, the state had entered information from each personal income tax return by hand into its computer database, although the scanners had been used for several years to read tax returns from businesses.

The scanners allow the state to collect and store much more information from each form.

Tax Commissioner Janet Ancel said the scanners, and the software used to guide them, were the primary cause of a rash of problems that later developed, including delayed personal income tax refunds.

But she has said most of the glitches were to be expected in any new computer operation.

The scanners misread many returns. Among other problems, the scanners sparked mistaken notices telling taxpayers they owed money to the state or, in some cases, providing overpayments to taxpayers.

Tom Howker, who oversees a similar scanning system in the Maine tax department, and who was in contact with Vermont officials during their troubles, said Ancel’s agency probably should have planned, prepared and tested more, although he said his state had problems when its system was new.

“I don’t think Vermont had kept as up to date on these things,” he said.

A consultant to the Tax Department, American Management Systems, expressed “significant concerns about the readiness of the (scanner) system” about five weeks before that system was supposed to switch on, according to minutes of a steering committee that oversaw the project.

Ancel said her agency heeded the consultant’s recommendations in time for the startup. She said that by that point the scanners had been tested plenty, from September through January.

http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/30477.html

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2001