JEFFERSON CITY — More than 18,000 Missouri businesses have suffered a computer glitch at the state’s main tax processing agency.
The Missouri Department of Revenue said Monday that the agency’s tax processing portal failed to process some tax payments between Dec. 30 and Jan. 19 “due to a technical error.”
“The error has been corrected. However, out of an abundance of caution, we did not attempt to reprocess these payments as we were concerned that an attempt to reprocess the payment would pull multiple payments from accounts receivable,” the spokeswoman said. income, Anne Marie Moy.
Starting Jan. 21, the department sent incident-related emails to businesses saying they needed to resubmit their payments.
“The department recognizes that these companies have done nothing wrong and will work to ensure that penalties are not imposed if they make a good faith attempt to resubmit payment,” Moy said.
Among the taxes involved are sales tax, use tax, withholding taxes, and tire and battery returns, she added.
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Moy said the issues were caused by a system upgrade that inadvertently rolled back a key piece of system functionality.
The problems are part of a growing litany of IT-related shortcomings stalking Gov. Mike Parson’s administration, including data vulnerabilities uncovered by the Post-Dispatch.
An 11-year-old flaw in a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website was uncovered by a post-expedition reporter, who found that the social security numbers of Missouri teachers, administrators, and school counselors were vulnerable to hacking. public exposure due to shortcomings in programming. .
The state’s computer problems also affected the launch of an expanded Medicaid program last year. After being forced to launch the much-wanted program through a lawsuit, Department of Social Services officials said it would take two months to program their computers to enroll 275,000 low-income Missourians. additional.
In the state’s proposed budget, the Office of Administration is asking for at least $26 million to replace the state’s 21-year-old mainframe computer, which is written in code created 60 years ago. .
In November, a state office building in Jefferson City housing computers used by child protection workers and computer programmers caught fire and burned.
According to budget officials, a real overhaul of state computer systems will cost about $83.5 million. This cost would also fund a new portal allowing residents to access various state services.
representing Doug RicheyR-Excelsior Springs, defends the use of $2.8 billion in federal relief funds to pay for information technology upgrades, which could take up to six years.
Moy suggested that more businesses may have been affected by the Department of Revenue’s issue.
“The department is in the process of evaluating any remaining periods that still have outstanding liabilities and we will take additional steps to notify these companies this week,” she said.
“(T)e department is working to bring these accounts up to date, fully acknowledging that these customers were not at fault and therefore will not incur penalties,” Moy added.
Originally published 1 p.m. Monday, February 28.
