Treasurer says IRS snafu was just an accident
Wichita County Treasurer Stephen Jones told county commissioners Monday he thinks recent troubles with the Internal Revenue Service happened during a transition between office holders.
As a result, the county must pay substantial penalties to the IRS because payroll taxes weren’t paid on time.
“It’s fairly often that people make mistakes. Nobody had any malicious intent,” Jones said. “It was just an accident that happened that we’re trying to fix."
He was referring to the transition that occurred when former Treasurer Bob Hampton retired and Jones took office on Jan. 1.
He said that for several pay periods after he took office there was a misunderstanding about the due date for those taxes. The county didn't find out about the errors until April.
Wichita County pays the IRS about $250,000 per payroll cycle.
Jones said the county has not received a final figure on what the it owes, but commissioners earlier set aside up to $50,000.
Jones said his office is working with the IRS to get some remediation.
“I’m hopeful we’re going to be able to resolve this and get that payment back," he said.
Commissioners were caught off guard at a meeting on July 17 when they learned the county had amassed the penalties.
"We don’t want this to happen again," Commissioner Mark Beauchamp said Monday. "I think each one of us on this court has taken angry calls from our constituents asking, 'what are you going to do to ensure this doesn’t happen again?'"
Jones said his office is taking steps to ensure the commissioners' court stays updated.
The matter
was initially placed on that meeting’s consent agenda, which is normally passed without much discussion, but Johnson moved it into the regular agenda where it sparked heated discussion. Commissioners had learned on short notice the county owned up to $50,000 to the IRS for taxes that had not been paid on time since Dec., 2022 – even though the Auditor’s Office became aware of the problem in April.
Corey Liner, the county's chief deputy auditor, said the mistake was due to a misunderstanding of what date the taxes were due to be paid. He said the Wichita County Auditor’s Office got an invoice from the IRS in April saying the county incurred a late penalty for the last payroll period of 2022, and then he discovered the county paid its taxes late throughout the first half of 2023.
Liner said the county asked for an abatement on the penalty but was turned down because of an earlier past due payment.
His boss, Chief Auditor Cheryll Jones, placed blame for the oversight on the Wichita County Treasurer’s Office, which she said is responsible for making the payments rather than her own office. She said former Treasurer Bob Hampton left no instructions on making the payments.
At the earlier meeting both Liner and Stephen Jones took responsibility for the blunder and apologized to commissioners.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Treasurer says IRS snafu was just an accident