By Luige del Puerto | Arizona Capitol Times
The agency in charge of making sure the state has the resources to operate at “the speed of business,” as Gov. Doug Ducey wants it to, has only four auditors monitoring thousands of corporations, the agency’s former chief economist said today.
Georganna Meyer, who is now a senior economist at the Maguire Company, said the Department of Revenue typically has 30 corporate auditors watching between 50,000 and 60,000 companies.
“Yesterday, I got a response that they’re down to four corporate income tax auditors, which says to me that basically, there is no corporate income tax auditing occurring,” she said.
DOR spokesman Sean Laux confirmed that his agency is down to four corporate auditors and one manager on the corporate income tax side, but he disputed Meyer’s assertion that low staffing might lead to a dramatic reduction in collections.
“We were certainly as surprised as you all in the room to hear Georganna’s comments,” Laux said. “We don’t buy it.”
Laux said the reduction in staffing stems from having cumulatively $7 million less in DOR’s budget than last year.
