MOUNT JOY, Pa. — $34,576,826,561.47 in tax interest and penalties.
That's what the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue claimed Barry Tangert of Mount Joy owed the state.
"I couldn't fathom what the number was at first. I'm like it looks like more than a million. The decimal points are dropped down. They're not even on the first line there are so many digits," said Tangert.
Right away, he knew this had to be a mistake. Tangert called the Department of Revenue and the person who answered the phone was definitely intrigued.
Tangert said, "The first gentlemen I talked to, his first statement was 'Well you had a good year! And I said 'I wish!'"
Obviously, the Department of Revenue said this was an error.
He was told that one of his tax documents related to an investment property had a bunch of 9s on the bottom.
Probably enough 9's to make it look like his income was more than $99 billion.
Tangert said someone from the Department of Revenue told him, "It could have been an input from your tax firm or it could have been an interface problem with their program and our program, we don't know yet."
After a few weeks, he got another letter in the mail showing the state actually owed him $62.
That made a lot more sense because Tangert said, "If I've ever owed anything to the state it was more than likely $100 or less."
FOX43 Finds Out did confirm that because Tangert did not make enough money to pay $30 billion in taxes.
To which he said, "Does anybody? I mean really, think about that number. You'd have to be a trillionaire or $100 billion a year based on current tax rates, they tax about a third. You'd have to make $100 billion a year to be taxed 30 billion or thereabouts. Does anybody make $100 billion a year?
No. The answer to that is no.
Forbes says Elon Musk is the richest person in the U.S. and- for some perspective here- most reports state Elon Musk made $94 billion last year.
So yeah, even his state tax bill would be less than Tangert's.
FOX43 Finds Out did reach out to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue to ask how this could happen and how no one stopped them from sending the letter when it was obviously a mistake.
We were told, "It's important to stress that this was an isolated issue that affected one person and was corrected very quickly. This is only one personal income tax return out of more than 6.5 million returns that are filed annually with our department. The vast majority of those returns are processed without any issues. That's partly the case because we are seeing roughly 90 percent of our taxpayers filing their personal income tax returns electronically these days. That is a very encouraging fact that reduces errors and makes the entire process run more efficiently. But even with this trend, there are some cases — such as this one — where there is an error made with a specific return that needs to be corrected. In those instances, we work as quickly as possible to address the issue and make sure that we are communicating with the taxpayer who is affected. That's exactly what occurred in this case — one of our representatives contacted the taxpayer to discuss the matter directly with him and walk him through what transpired."
They didn't tell us how they could prevent this from happening in the future, but if you do think something is up with your refund or what you owe, you can call the PA Department of Revenue here.
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