THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 12, 1995 TAG: 9501120420
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
The tax man taketh, but he's not the only one.
City tax officials on Wednesday were hustling to replace about 26,000 Virginia state income tax booklets that were mistakenly picked up by the city's refuse department and thrown into a municipal landfill.
``Lord knows what happened,'' said a chagrined Robert P. Vaughan, the commissioner of revenue. ``It baffles me that someone could come along and throw out the tax booklets, but that's exactly what happened.''
The mix-up took place Friday on a loading dock at the city's operations building at the municipal complex, he said. The tax forms, complete with their familiar gummed labels, were sitting in eight U.S. post office mail crates awaiting pickup by the Postal Service.
Next to the mail was a pile of scrap cardboard that city workers had been instructed to haul away. At some time that morning, a city trash truck pulled up and the cardboard - plus the tax forms - were hauled away.
Before the truck pulled away, a refuse worker asked about the empty mail carts and whether they, too, were junk. He was told no.
When a city mail room worker realized a short time later that the carts had been full of mail and were now empty, he called Doug W. Grant, chief deputy under Vaughan.
Curious, Grant raced over to the loading dock and, in an alarming moment of realization, called the city's sanitation department, which then radioed the last known trash truck to stop at the operations building.
The truck was already at a nearby trash transfer station - half empty.
Grant drove to the station, found the truck, and reported the grim news to his boss, Vaughan.
``Those forms were so pitiful, all covered with garbage,'' Vaughan said. ``You know how people sometimes throw away a half-empty soda? A bunch of them were all soaked through. I took one look at what remained, at what they were able to salvage, and I said, `Forget it.' ''
The city found a way to replace the missing forms. Because they were the most recent batch of the 140,000 total booklets sent to the city by the state each year, Vaughan's office was able to order a duplicate batch.
Virginia Beach residents use the forms in the booklets to file their state income tax returns, although about 60,000 city taxpayers last year bypassed the forms and filed electronically.
The cost of the mishap is still being calculated.
``You would think that in 1995 something like that wouldn't happen,'' Vaughan said. ``Let's hope that it won't be an omen for the rest of the year.'' MEMO: If you are concerned about late forms or plan to be out of town
before the May 1 filing deadline for state returns and have not received
a form yet, call the commissioner of revenue's office at 427-4251 or
427-4483.
by CNB