"There's no way": Man receives $52 billion tax bill
An American man has been left confused after receiving a letter from the government claiming he owed $52 billion in unpaid taxes.
Barry Tangert got two letters in the mail from the state of Pennsylvania, opening the first to find a refund check from the federal government for over $900.
His joy was short-lived though as he opened the second letter to find the income billing notice from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue claiming that he owed a jaw-dropping $52,950,744,735.28 ($34,576,826,561.47 AUD).
“I knew it was an obvious blunder. I don’t even make over $100,000 a year, so there’s no way I could owe anywhere near that,” Barry Tangert told local outlet News 8.
The total sum was so large it didn’t even fit on a single line on the document.
Tangert immediately knew it was a mistake, with the astonishing number being more than triple the $11 billion America’s richest man Elon Musk says he owed the government in 2022.
How the error made it all the way to his doorstep is still a mystery to Tangert.
“I don’t know if it was a computer glitch in the transmission or if it was an input error from my tax preparer,” Tangert said, noting that his tax preparer filed an amendment after noticing an error on his 2022 return.
He reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue’s customer service line, which also provided little help to the baffled man.
“The first thing he said was, ‘You had a good year.’ And I said, ‘I wish,’” Tangert said.
Fortunately, the state department has since resolved the issue, which it chalked up to wrong numbers simply being put into the system.
Image credits: WGAL News 8