Tax error benefits county

A tax error will give Sweetwater County about $2.37 million, but how it will be divided among the towns and cities is still unclear.

During a recent Sweetwater County Commissioners meeting, county treasurer Robb Slaughter informed the commission the county will be receiving additional tax money because of a tax error.

Slaughter said the Department of Revenue informed him that a Sweetwater County vendor mistakenly reported its taxes to Natrona County instead of Sweetwater County.

The error, which was discovered during a regular audit, is estimated to be around $2.4 million.

Kim Lovett, administrator of the Excise Tax Division of the Department of Revenue, said she doesn’t have the numbers as to how much Sweetwater County will receive because they are still trying to get Natrona County taken care of first. 

Lovett said an audit on a Sweewater County vendor, which will remain confidential, was completed for a 27-month period.

Of those 27 months, 20 involved payments reported to Natrona County.

The audit also discovered the vendor overpaid on their taxes by $600,000 and paid Natrona County roughly $2.37 million. Not only will Sweetwater County need to be paid, but the vendor must receive the $600,000.

“It’s not something that happens very often,” Lovett said. “At least, not to this large extreme.”

According to Lovett, there are about 30,000 vendors in Wyoming and they can only conduct about 500 audits a year. She said a large vendor that has numerous stores across Wyoming files as one vendor not numerous vendors. The amount of work it takes to audit each vendor takes a long time.

Each invoice had to be looked at from that 27-month period, which ended in 2015.

“It took quite a while,” she said.

With Natrona County already suffering economically, owing $2.37 really hit them. Lovett said their first priority is helping Natrona County.

“We’re going to help them get through this,” she said.

Lovett said the discovery of the error couldn’t have happened at a more inconvenient time. All of the budgets were set in Natrona County. She said the $2.37 was taken out in one lump sum. She said they are going to make it right and checks are going to be written to various cities and towns in Natrona County for the amount taken from them.

She said each city and town will then need to agree to pay the money back over time. It would be like paying back a loan, but without any interest attached to it. Once Natrona County is taken care of, they will calculate how the money will be distributed to Sweetwater County. Lovett estimated the information would be available sometime later this week or early next week.