Costly Accounting Error Impacts San Francisco Commuters

Posted by accountingweb on Oct 25 1999 134 printer friendly

Things are not well in the Golden Gate city, and commuters will bear the brunt. A reported accounting error of $14.4 million by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) could enable riders to take aging buses for three years and delay projects in and around the Bay Area.

The Commission's mistake in alloting sales tax revenues to the San Francisco Municipal Railway and AC Transit has caused expenditures of $7.2 million more than originally planned. MTC discovered the mistake three weeks ago and blamed it on accountants who the MTC said failed to check estimates of sales tax revenues against actual payments made to the Railway and AC.

This mistake, repeated over the last two years, was undetected because AC and the Railway were slow in making withdrawals, which kept the account balances higher than they should have been.

Voice of the Editor

Even though any accounting auditor would tell you it seems like there are an awful lot of tax accountants out there, surely one-third of the country isn't made up of tax preparers, so it's rather startling news to learn that one-third of Americans like to do their taxes. Who knew?

This Week on AccountingWEB

Bill Walter of Gross, Mendelsohn & Associates and Harold Gaar of TravisWolff LLP weigh in on mobile technology use while employees are at work.

WestArk RSVP and Fayette County Community Action Agency – organizations that received grant funding through the IRS Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) program – spoke with AccountingWEB about how they assist senior citizens in their communities.

CPA Robert Raiola, who heads the Sports & Entertainment Group of Fazio, Mannuzza, Roche, Tankel, LaPilusa, LLC, talks NFL player income taxes with AccountingWEB.

Retiring KPMG Centennial Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business Robert May, PhD talks with AccountingWEB about his rewarding forty-three-year career.