April 29, 2024
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The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue mistakenly gave a Lancaster County man a tax bill of $34.6 billion dollars in the mail. The error has since been corrected.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's proposed 2024-2025 budget calls for $48.3 billion in spending over the coming year. Apparently, a mistake at the state revenue department gave one guy the impression he had to pay for about $34 billion of it.
Barry Tangert, of Mount Joy, Lancaster County, received two letters in the mail after filing his taxes this year. One was a $900 refund check from the federal government. Not too shabby! But the second letter was an income tax billing notice from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue that said he owed the state exactly $34,576,826,561.47, WGAL reported.
The number was so long it didn't even fit on one line.
Barry Tangert's jaw dropped when he got his latest tax bill. He was charged more than $34 billion in overdue taxes, penalties and interest. https://t.co/smKwkKfwBp
— Dillon Fuhrman (@DFuhrmanKYMA) April 27, 2024
Tangert said he was initially shocked by the letter, but quickly realized it had to be a mistake.
"I knew it was an obvious blunder," Tangert told WGAL. "I don't even make over $100,000 a year, so there's no way I could owe anywhere near that."
A spokesperson for the revenue department said Monday that the reason for the error is confidential, but confirmed that the issue had been resolved.
Tangert said he believes it may have been related to an amendment that his tax preparer filed on his 2022 return. It's possible that a mistake during that process triggered a glitch in the revenue department's tax billing system.
To put the erroneous tax bill in perspective, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he paid $11 billion in taxes in 2021. Spending that much money in a year would come out to more than $3 million every day. Hopefully, Tangert finds a rewarding way to spend his $900 refund check.
