Vermont Taxpayers Affected by Software Errors Will Receive Assistance

The Vermont Department of Taxes has announced that taxpayers whose 2015 returns were impacted by certain commercial vendor software issues (related to itemized deductions) will not be required to amend or pay any additional tax.

The department stopped processing any such amendments that it received after June 29, and any payments received related to such amendments prior to that date will be refunded. A good faith contribution by two of the tax preparation software companies, Intuit and H&R Block, has allowed the department to take this action.

As previously announced (bit.ly/software-errors), the Vermont Department of Taxes learned in April that there were coding errors in several tax preparation software products, which have since been corrected. Because of these errors, not all taxpayers who itemized deductions were correctly routed by the software to submit the IN-155 form, which calculated new statutory limitations for certain deductions. As a result, those taxpayers underpaid their 2015 taxes, due April 15, 2016.

Since that announcement, the department has worked closely with Intuit, H&R Block and three other software vendors to assist affected taxpayers to amend their returns (by filing a corrected Form IN-155) and pay the additional amount due. However, the timing of this with the department’s major IT project made those amendments impractical for both the state and impacted taxpayers. The department will launch its new, state-of-the-art VTax system for personal income tax in December. 

For more information visit:  http://tax.vermont.gov/press-release/vermont-department-taxes-offers-help-taxpayers-impacted-commercial-software-errors