For a state that's out of money, Indiana is mighty loose with its checkbook.

In the past week, the Indiana Department of Revenue mistakenly sent out 494 extra checks worth $73,229.76 to four taxpayers.

Each of these unidentified taxpayers was entitled to a check -- just not so many.

The problem was a computer that just kept on giving. These taxpayers were due interest from 1999 state income tax returns they had amended. But the computer "kept wanting to give it to them over and over," said department taxpayer advocate Cathy Henninger.

Last Wednesday, revenue officials first discovered the problem with one taxpayer; then another baffled taxpayer called to report the unexpected money.

Henninger said the four taxpayers did nothing wrong -- and none of the extra checks was cashed.

The state has recovered about half of the checks -- and a revenue official picked up another batch of 22 from a taxpayer Tuesday.

Only one taxpayer hasn't given the checks back yet. Henninger said revenue officials are working with him to get back 219 checks, each worth $327.10.

The errors involving three other taxpayers involved 128 checks for $1.40 each, 22 checks for $2.53 each, and 125 checks for $10.88 each.

It may be pocket change, but Indiana is running an $850 million deficit, and lawmakers are scrambling for every penny as they craft a new two-year budget.

Henninger said officials have fixed the problem, which isn't the agency's first.

In 1998, several hundred Hoosiers mistakenly were told they would be fined because they had not paid their quarterly taxes.

Officials blamed that error on employees who used the wrong method to record a critical date. Rather than looking at the postmark on the outside of the envelope, workers recorded the date they actually received the return.

In 1999, a company working for the agency accidentally printed the Social Security numbers of nearly 400,000 state taxpayers on envelopes that taxpayers mail back to the state.

IndyStar

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2003