Missouri tax agency glitch shines another spotlight on state’s technology woes | Politics

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 caution, we did not try to reprocess those payments as we were concerned that an attempt to reprocess the payment may actually pull multiple payments from customer accounts,” said Revenue spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy.

Beginning on Jan. 21, the department sent emails related to the incident to the businesses saying they needed to resubmit their payments.

“The department recognizes these business did nothing wrong and will work to ensure penalties are not assessed if they made a good faith attempt to resubmit payment,” Moy said. 

Among the taxes affected were sales tax, use tax, withholding taxes and tire and battery returns, she added.

The problems are among a growing litany of computer-related shortfalls dogging Gov. Mike Parson’s administration, including data vulnerabilities uncovered by the Post-Dispatch.

The 11-year-old flaw was discovered by a Post-Dispatch reporter, who found that the Social Security numbers of school teachers, administrators and counselors across Missouri were vulnerable to public exposure due to programming shortcomings.

The state’s computer woes also affected the launch of an expanded Medicaid program last year. After being forced to begin the long-sought program via a lawsuit, officials at the Department of Social Services said it would take two months to program their computers to allow for an additional 275,000 low-income Missourians to be enrolled.

In the state’s proposed budget, the Office of Administration is seeking at least $26 million to replace the state’s 21-year-old main computer that is written in a code created 60 years ago.

In November, a state office building in Jefferson City housing computers used by child welfare workers and computer programmers caught fire and burned down.

According to budget officials, a true overhaul of the state’s computer systems will cost an estimated $83.5 million. That cost would also finance a new portal for residents to access various state services.

Rep. Doug Richey, R-Excelsior Springs, is championing the use of $2.8 billion in federal relief funds to pay for the information technology upgrades, which could take as long as six years.

Moy suggested that more businesses may have been affected by the problem.

“The department is in the process of evaluating all the remaining periods that still have outstanding liabilities and we will take additional actions to notify those businesses this week,” she said.