The slip-up happened in November 2007, when two new workers in Maryland’s state assessments office were inputting the value of taxable real estate in Montgomery County. They mistakenly entered $179 billion, when the real number was closer to $163 billion.

But the error wasn’t unearthed until late summer of 2008, when workers in the state’s budget and treasurer offices figured out that Montgomery property taxes were more than $18 million below their projected level.

By then, the error had found its way through at least 18 counties and wreaked havoc on many budgets — including the State Department of Education. The Department uses a sophisticated formula which shifts money from school systems with more wealth to those that are less well off.

Because of the Montgomery Country overstatement, $4.5 billion in state education fund was misallocated among Maryland’s school systems.  Schools in Montgomery (which appeared to be flooded with property wealth) were denied funds, while schools in other districts were given too much money.

State officials claim the workers responsible for the error have been disciplined, but are calling for further audits of a system that would allow such an error to remain unnoticed for months.

Sometimes, there’s a big difference between what your job responsibilities are on paper and what you actually do.

No one knows that better than cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. On his Dilbert Blog, he gave readers a creative assignment: “Describe your own job in one sentence, preferably in a humorously derogatory way.”

Although there were hundreds of responses, Adams was able to narrow it down to these ten job descriptions:

1. Fast food worker — Making food that is as healthy when it goes into someone’s body as it is when it comes back out.
2. Technical writer — Writing words that no one wants to read.
3. Assistant horse trainer — Cleaning up after an animal that makes more money than I do in a year.
4. IT director — Repeatedly fixing what employees repeatedly break.
5. Quality Assurance tester — Making people feel bad about their work.
6. Landscape photographer — Showing people how beautiful the Earth would be if they didn’t live on it.
7. Incident manager — Calling people who know what they’re doing — and then asking them what they’re doing.
8. College professor — Talking in other people’s sleep.
9. Baseball umpire — Standing on a field and getting yelled at for hours.
10. Divorce lawyer — Helping people hate one another.

Does summing up your job in one sentence make it sound different — or funny? Share your own descriptions in the comments section below.

After failing to report a large portion of income on his personal tax return, former Drug Enforcement Agency agent Greg Campion was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. The “income” Campion hid went unreported because he’d stolen the cash from his operations against illegal drug runners.

Amazingly, the fact that Campion had skimmed some drug money from the top wasn’t the main issue with IRS or the Department of Justice — it was his failure to complete required paperwork. His theft of the drug money was uncontested, but the feds said the least Campion could do was correctly report his hard-stolen funds on his tax return.

Julius Baroi, along with four other University of Central Oklahoma students, founded the loosely-organized party business “Kegheadz” to rake in some extra earning. When the group’s MySpace account boasted the business had “over a billion served,” Oklahoma state tax officials took notice. After an in-depth assessment, the students were hit with a state tax bill for $320,000.

After the assessment, Baroi and the other co-owners claimed their MySpace boasts exaggerated more than slightly — Kegheadz claims to have hosted only 20 parties in the past year in a half. The business has made less than $2,000 since its inception.

But state tax officials aren’t letting up on the students. According to 2007 tax documents, the business actually hosted more than 100 events over the past five years.

A Pennsylvania-based construction company was in the practice of contracting a cleaning and maintenance service to clean sites while they were being worked on. Even though cleaning services are usually considered a taxable service, the construction company believed the cleaning was an integral part of the construction process and should be considered tax-exempt.

After sending an inquiry to the state DOR, the ruling found that all cleaning services were tax-exempt, except for the final cleaning that took place at the end of a project. Since the cleaning service removed debris and other materials which helped the work site meet safety requirements, it was needed to keep the project going.

However, once the final cleaning took place, it was no longer a part of the construction process. Although it was still needed to obtain a certificate of occupancy for a building or house, those services — dusting, waxing, cleaning, etc. — met the definition of taxable cleaning services.

Cite: Letter Ruling, No. SUT-08-010, June 16, 2008.

Editor’s note: Regs vary widely from state to state. If you have a specific sales and use tax question, consult your state’s DOR for more information.

After receiving an Illinois state assessment claiming it owed a “User Fee” of $39.20, a company asked for an explanation of the charge and the state’s legal justification for assessing it.

Usually, states are more than willing to explain complicated rulings in detail or why certain assessments were reached. The reply from Illinois was no different — the revenue department sent back a pages-long explanation addressing the company’s question.

But it didn’t actually answer a thing.

The department claimed it couldn’t come up with a reason for the charge, but instead of amending its assessment — a nice “Sorry, we goofed,” might have worked — it offered up a General Information Letter (GIL) explaining the Retailers’ Occupation Tax Act and Service Occupation Tax bases.

There is some good news for the company: The state recommends visiting its Web site, where more of the same, unrelated information can be read at leisure.

That’s what the owners (and lawyer) of Adult Video Megaplexxx are asking. Three years after House police officers seized over $50,000 in adult toys from the business, a U.S. Court of Appeals declared the items were legal to sell.

But once the business-owners showed up at the station to collect their property, they hit a minor roadblock — officers were unable to locate the items in the property room.

How exactly do 564 adult items go missing? Police officials are claiming the items were destroyed, yet there were no court orders authorizing the destruction of any materials.

Richard Segura, acting director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law claims that the police shouldn’t have had to safeguard the items for so long.

“If I go over to your house and spend the night there and leave my shoes, can I expect my shoes to be there three years later?” asked Segura. “What is the police department going to do with a bunch of sex toys … keep them?”

That’s what the business’s owners and lawyers think. Regardless of how much time passed, the police department wasn’t within its rights to destroy property without following regulations.

After reporting its numbers for 2007, it’s clear that the Vatican’s having just as much trouble as stateside businesses. Despite bringing in $368.4 million — $18.7 million of which was from U.S. donations alone — the Catholic Church’s governing body ended up with a $14.2 million loss.

That’s mostly because of the 15% hit the dollar’s taken against the euro. But other areas in the organization helped: the Vatican Radio and its newspaper, “The Holy See,” lost $22.7 million.

Sections of the Vatican on the rise:

• Tourism is up, with 4.3 million visitors to museums and other attractions, including the Sistine Chapel
• The Vatican Television Centre, which broadcasts the Pope’s regular audiences in St. Peter’s Square, made a profit of $779,000, and
• The Vatican Publishing House ended its year with a $2.5 million surplus.

But the answer’s more complicated than you think.

A Wal-Mart store located in Bentonville, AR, sold both Starbucks frappuccino coffee drink and Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink in glass bottles. Unsure of whether or not these items were taxable or exempt, the company’s headquarters submitted an in-depth petition on behalf of its NY stores to the state’s advisory panel looking for clarification.

The Taxation and Finance Department issued good and bad news to the chain: Frappuccino is exempt, but tax needs to be collected on sales of Yoo-Hoo.

For this specific frappuccino beverage, the main ingredient used in its production is brewed coffee. The panel ruled the beverage is, essentially, a flavored, cold coffee, and coffee is exempt from sales tax. But the myriad of ingredients used in Yoo-Hoo don’t qualify for an exemption — although it contains small amounts of cocoa, it’s considered a non-carbonated, flavored soft drink.

How does something like that happen? Believe it or not, it’s not a fraud attempt or a scam artist — it’s probably a local school district. Many states allow cities and school districts to issue a “reverse appeal” if they think your company’s property tax assessment is too low.

And since most districts get the bulk of their funding from collected property taxes, that’s more than enough motivation to make sure everyone — both individuals and businesses — pay what they owe.

Even if your company gets pulled into court and slammed with a higher assessment, odds are good you can whittle the district or state’s number down.

In one of the most recent cases, Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Wilkes-Barre Area School District filed an appeal against the new Mohegan Sun Casino property. The casino operators agreed to pay the school district $21 million in an out-of-court settlement — lower than the original request, but still a painful hit on the books.