Faculty and administrators saw smaller paychecks for one pay period in January after payroll accidentally withheld too much for taxes.
Ohio University's Payroll Department receives tax rate updates from several companies periodically throughout the year so the university knows how much money to set aside from each paycheck for federal and state taxes.
In January, the school received incorrect information from Vertex Inc., and had already processed faculty and administrative paychecks before it became aware, according to Mark Hopton, assistant vice president for University Business Services.
Normally
we would have had time to input the correct rates before this caused any problems because of the amount of time between payroll processes Hopton explained in an e-mail. However in order to enable the university to produce 30
000 W-2 Tax Forms in a very short window
payrolls for faculty and administrators were processed earlier than usual
using the incorrect tax rates furnished by the vendor.
The mistake only impacted one paycheck, but it cost individuals anywhere from $14 to $150. Hopton said most employees fell at the lower end of that scale.
At the latest, employees will get the money back as a tax refund next spring. Hopton said that in the meantime, they could adjust each W-4 on their Oracle pages to include a larger exemption. If employees do add allowances to their forms, Hopton cautions, that change will remain until the employee change it back.
This article and headline been corrected. It was payroll, not Human Resources, that was responsible for an error on university paychecks.
1
News
Emily Grannis
