Early Tax Birds Found A Worm, Or Bug

Glitch shuts state income tax Telefile system

The state's numbers didn't match her numbers and she didn't want to play games, so Lori DePolito called the Department of Revenue Services.

"I got a live person," she said, "and she agreed with me there was a mistake."

On the first day of electronic filing of income tax returns, she had found the program was putting her in the wrong tax bracket.

"It came off with this off-the-wall number that didn't fit with my figures at all," she said.

DePolito said she had overpaid her tax by $278 and the Telefile system was telling her she had overpaid by only $105.

"And they called me back and said there was a glitch in the system and that they were going to shut the system down and they'd get it all figured out for me," she said. "I wouldn't have to refile and everything would be okay."

DRS Director of Communications Sarah Kaufman said the system was shut down for fifty minutes so the problem could be corrected.

"We had about forty or so people who filed and we don't want to overcharge these people," said Kaufman.  "So we're going to go through, recalculate their returns for them and get in touch with them, and a lot of them may find that they're going to get a larger refund than they initially thought they were."

Barring a problem with the return or with the program, electronic filing generates a refund in just four business days, she said, in either a check or direct deposit.

The average state income tax refund last year was $511.49, said Kaufman.

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