Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 13:45:05 CUT
From: Dewey Coffman <ibmpa!vpdbox.austin.ibm.com!dewey@ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com>
Newsgroups: comp.society.privacy
Subject: W-2's mailed to wrong people
Organization: Computer Privacy Digest
X-Submissions-To: comp-privacy@pica.army.mil
X-Administrivia-To: comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil
X-Computer-Privacy-Digest: Volume 2, Issue 011, Message 10 of 11

	Feel free to edit this down to size.
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	U.S. goofs on some W-2s; copies may be neighbors'
		By Ed Jahn, Copley News Service


   San Diego,  When the government goofed this time, it did it in
triplicate.
   Many local civilian employees of the military are finding that out
this week as they get their income-tax forms showing last year's
earnings.
   Instead of the top original and two copies of their W-2 statement,
some people are getting the top one with their earnings, but with the
copies showing how much two other civilian employees earned last year.
   The mistake also hits close to home, because the forms were grouped
by postal ZIP codes.
   "I had the statement for a neighbor and he had one for a guy up
the street," said Patricia Armijo, a computer programmer with the
Naval Computer Telecommunication Station at North Island Naval Air
Station.
   "It doesn't bother me so much that it happened, it's just that
they didn't catch it," Armijo said. "Somebody else at work who had
the same problem warned me or I would have done what I usually do and
waited until the last minute to file my tax form, and had a real
problem."
   The mistake had officials chagrined at the Department of Defense
Financial and Accounting Service in Washington, D.C.
   "Alas, it's true," said Jean Marie Ward, public affairs officer
for the service that handles payrolls.
   "The (Department of Defense) contracts out most of our printing
jobs and it appears one of the contractors had a problem in aligning
the forms," Ward said.
   "Pay is about the most intimate issue you can have with someone
who works for you," she said. "Things got screwed up. We will make
sure it gets fixed."
   At the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park, the snafu had one employee
seething. "The government puts so much emphasis on employees
protecting government secrecy and then they do this," he said, asking
that he not be quoted by name.
   "Here they are cranking out 200,000 forms without any quality
control, and it's going to be redone at an enormous cost to the
government," he said.
   "And I've got neighbors who know how much I made last year."
   Ward said that although there are nearly 1 million civilian
employees of the military, only a fraction appear to be affected by
the error.
   In San Diego, there are about 28,000 civilians working for the Navy
and Marine Corps. And not all of them were affected by the foul-up.
   "We haven't got a firm fix on the total number or many other
details," Ward said. It looks like only tax forms sent from the
regional offices in Colorado were improperly aligned, she added.
   The snafu leaves people without enough proper printouts to submit
for federal and state income tax, and still have one to keep for
personal records.
   Although some people said they were mailing the extra tax
information on to the two other people involved, Ward said it was best
to "just destroy all the materials that don't belong to you. If you
don't feel good about that, just wait for further instructions."
   She said the Internal Revenue Service has been contacted and has
advised that photocopies of the original form are acceptable. "So if
you positively have to file your tax forms tonight, go ahead and copy
the original."
   In the past, local civilian employees were paid out of the local
Navy payroll, according to Ken Mitchell, a public affairs officer for
North Island whose forms arrived without error.
   "Six months ago, the Department of Defense switched over to a new
system that uses computer printouts," he said. The perforated sheets
were misaligned when fed through a machine that glues them together,
something that didn't happen when the Navy used carbon paper, he
explained.
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