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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Misvalued house causes budget woes, unemployment and other headache

Check your numbers. This is the advise that I would give everybody in the business of .... well, dealing with numbers.

A house was originally valued at US$121,000 but a computer glitch (always a favourite argument) increased the value to US$400 million.

This accident caused property tax to increase from a mere US$1,500 to US$8 million. The local council happily used the increased budget for their own planning purposes.

"Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of US$3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return US$2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a US$200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses US$900,000."

Quite heavy in a small city and interesting, that the discovery and correction of the mistake took that long.

(By Asia Business Consulting)