My Life As A Military Spouse

This makes my head hurt......

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service has been ordered to do a full review of four years of Army payroll records after congressional auditors discovered four consecutive years of mistakes in withholding of Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Auditors found 1,500 errors over a four-year period in the Army payroll.

They did not look at income tax withholding, only at Social Security and Medicare.

In a report released Thursday, the Government Accountability Office said it looked at quarterly tax withholding reports for 2004 through 2007, 16 reports in all, and found mistakes in every one.

“Some service members had too much tax withheld, others had too little withheld,” the report said. “We were not able to determine the extent to which individual members identified errors in their pay statements and requested corrections. However, we determined that the underlying control weaknesses that resulted in errors, and untimely calculation and reporting of payroll data, have continued for several years.”

In response, defense officials said they had ordered a reconciliation of tax withholding records, including a review of individual records. Mistakes will be corrected, according to a statement from Michael Easton, the Pentagon’s deputy chief financial officer.

Auditors discovered 380 cases where Social Security taxes were over-withheld and 435 where they were under-withheld. They also found 326 errors in Medicare tax withholding.

“Although it is possible that individual service members may have identified errors and requested corrections on their W-2s, there is no assurance that all errors were corrected,” the report said.

posted by LoveMyTanker @ 10:13 PM