Should I be worried about this letter from the state?

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

Letters from government agencies can be real scary sometimes. Especially when they contain words like "Warrant" and penalties with commas in them.

By all means, take these letters seriously. But don't let them scare you.

They're a lot less scary when you know what's happening behind the scenes.

A client recently received a letter from a state agency.

"A WARRANT has been issued for your company. Failure to pay this fine will result in DAILY INTEREST." 

Scary, right? Especially since the payroll service had been submitting their quarterly payments on time since they hired their first employee years ago.

Three weeks, five phone calls, two Power of Attorney letters, one printer, and one fax machine later, we got an answer. 

They'd had some mail delivery issues two years ago. When the second letter got returned to sender, the state closed their account. 

Why? Do not ask why. This is the government.

Because the account was deactivated, they didn't get their tax rate the following year. Or the year after that. 

Because they didn't have a tax rate, the payments they dutifully submitted every quarter couldn't be verified. 

The money was received and tracked, just not credited to the account. 

Basically, the system returned a 404 error and the state decided, 'Oh. That's weird. I guess we'll just put this money in a piggy bank and see what happens.'

Because the payments couldn't be verified, the system decided they were overdue. 

Because the payments were two years overdue, they sent a scary letter demanding payment.

"They shouldn't be sending those warrant letters when there's still work to do," said the long-suffering guy who was actually helpful told me. "But apparently there's no way to stop them." 

'You could unplug the printer,' I thought, but didn't say. Instead, I said, "So what should we do about the letter?" 

"Oh, you can disregard it," he sighed. "I'll assess your rate and you'll get a letter next week letting you know if you owe anything."

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the states that has its act together.

---

Had enough of the nonsense? Let us troubleshoot your tricky payroll issues for you.

Let's Talk