Problems with a computer upgrade at the Department of Revenue have delayed millions of dollars in severance tax payments owed to Louisiana’s parishes.
As The Associated Press reports, Louisiana shares the taxes it collects for oil and gas production from its land and water bottoms with the local parishes. Treasurer John Kennedy says his office hasn’t been able to make quarterly payments due at the end of December and March because it hasn’t received tax information needed from the revenue department.
The last payment was made six months ago in October.
“I think the parishes have been very patient. But we’ve started to get a lot of calls going, ‘What is the deal? Who’s running this thing?’ And we’re starting to get a lot of calls from legislators. I’m telling them I can’t write checks when I don’t know the amount,” Kennedy tells The AP.
The revenue department says the computer glitch has been fixed and money should begin flowing to parishes by April 10. Agency spokeswoman Kizzy Payton says in a statement Wednesday that the tax information will be submitted to Kennedy’s office early next week.
She says the department “would like to apologize for any inconvenience and problems that may have occurred as a result of the delay. Going forward, the department does not anticipate any additional interruptions regarding severance tax distributions.”
The precise figure of how much is owed to the parishes isn’t clear because the data wasn’t yet available. But more than $30 million was doled out to the state’s 64 parishes over the same two financial quarters last year, according to treasury figures.
Payton says the delay is the byproduct of a $2 million computer upgrade of the agency’s tax administration system, through a contract with Colorado-based Fast Enterprises LLC. The department and Fast Enterprises are still trying to determine what caused the computer problems, and no penalties against the vendor have been discussed, Payton says.
