If you live or work in Kansas City, Mo., your most sensitive personal information has gone missing: your tax records.
In order to implement its 1 percent income tax, Kansas City regularly receives shipments of tapes from the Internal Revenue Service with personal and income information for everyone who lives or works in the city. The shipment of 26 tapes the city received last August, however, has gone missing, and nobody has the slightest idea where they went or who might have the information.
Officials could not say exactly who was affected or how much information was on the tapes.
The missing tapes were discovered when the Treasury Department didn’t get them back last month. The city is required to return each shipment of tapes after a certain time period.
The tapes require special equipment to read and software that is not commonly used, so the average person could not access the information, said Assistant City Manager Rich Noll.
“We have no reason to believe there was any foul play,” Noll said, although he added he could not rule it out.
Special agents with the Inspector General’s office of the Treasury Department, along with city officials, are investigating the missing tapes, Noll said. — Kansas City Star
Special equipment and uncommon software? Yeah, right. For any kind of tape you can imagine, someone’s selling a reader on eBay. And extracting data from the tape is generally a very simple process, even without “uncommon software.” Standard tape reading utilities are generally sufficient.
The kicker, though, is that this particular shipment of tapes was on a different type of tape than the city normally received, so it never actually got around to reading the tapes. Therefore, it has no idea what was on them. And while the IRS does know what’s on the tapes, it isn’t saying what data was lost or who was affected.
If you live or work in Kansas City, now’s a very good time to put an alert on your credit report, and then move somewhere else.
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Jan 22, 2007
BLOGical Thoughts » Monday, 22 January, 2007
wondering
Jan 27, 2007
they should make every employee at city hall take polygraph tests and they should also mke the irs send out notices to every one whose information has been lost and include what information has been lost…. social security numbers.. bank account numbers etc. If the irs can’t find out exactly who and what was included on the tapes, then they should be held accountable for gross negligence and fined by legal courts.
i personally beleieve that they should also lay off every employee at city hall until it is found out how the tapes got lost. This lay off should be without pay or benefits.
the people of kcmo should also be able to vote whether or not they want to repeal the city earnings tax.
ka chink for kcmo
Jan 27, 2007
As far as I am concerned kcmo was to provide free trashbags in exchange for the 1 per cent tax. it stopped giving out free trash bags years ago. Since then it has collecting the 1 per cent tax illegally.
I believe they should give out refunds for every year it has not given out free trash bags.
we should demand to see the original text on the ballot that promised free trash bags.
people living in kc have been ripped off for years.
let’s not be ripped forever.
Kansas is home
Jan 29, 2007
I work in Downtown KC MO and live in KS. I have been ripped off for years for the Kansas City taxes taken out of my check just for the privilage to cross the bridge to work. I don’t see any benefits of the tax. I assume that most MO residents don’t either. The “misplaced” IRS tapes are just another display of the citys mismanagement. I think the city govenment and city hall should be cleaned out of all staff and just start over. I want my city earnings tax back!
streets of gold
Jan 31, 2007
I wonder how many cities manage without city earnings tax?
with all the millions and millions dollars kc has gotten over the last thirty years through the earnings tax, i feel that we should have streets of gold by now.
Steve
Feb 28, 2007
I live in Blue Springs and have worked in different areas of Kansas City for 8 years. I should get all of that money back since I never lived in KC and now I go to vote at the primary for the mayor, but I can’t because I don’t live in the city. I beleive THAT IS taxation without representation.
Vincent Staggs
Dec 12, 2007
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only infuriated and bewildered by this local tax and the incompetence at the Revenue Division. Thus far they have: Tried to penalize me for taxes I paid but they miscalculated; tried to collect from me for 2002, when I didn’t move to KC until mid-2003; lost my wife’s 2006 Profits Return (the check we sent with it was cashed, so we know they received it); assessed me $11.00 plus penalties and interest for supposedly underpaid 2006 taxes without any explanation of this number or the income on which it was based; asked why I didn’t file a return for a year in which I earned $70 in Missouri (I was in grad school); and given us two different answers to the same question about business licenses. Why are they wasting my time and tax dollars on this? Is there anything we can do? Do we have any rights, or are we at the mercy of a merciless bureaucracy? We cannot wait to move out of KCMO.