The audit cites no examples of wrongdoing by the tax office’s staff members, but it describes a “significantly flawed” system in which supervisors can access property records and alter them without being detected.
Weak internal controls have long been an issue at the tax office, where officials promised sweeping reforms after a 2007 scandal involving a manager who stole $48 million through fraudulent refunds, the largest embezzlement scheme in D.C. history.
The audit, written by the internal affairs unit of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, was delivered in March to the District’s finance chief, Natwar M. Gandhi. It was made public after The Post, which had obtained a draft, submitted questions about its content.
The news of the audit comes as the tax office is under increased scrutiny for its handling of commercial property tax appeals. The Post reported this month that officials in the tax office had cut $2.6 billion from the proposed taxable value of more than 500 commercial properties after settling with owners.
Gandhi said that the settlements were necessary to avoid the expense of litigation and to correct errors by appraisers, and that they represented only a small fraction of the city’s tax base. The FBI and internal auditors are looking into complaints about the settlements, according to sources with knowledge of the inquiries.
The audit examined the computer-assisted mass appraisal system, finding that appraisers’ supervisors can essentially write over assessment data without leaving any record of changes.
Supervisors can lower the assessed value of a property, for example, or change the way it is classified under the city’s tax tiers, which could reduce an owner’s tax bill, the audit found.
The lack of internal controls, auditors wrote, “significantly increases the possibility that an erroneous or improper transaction could occur and remain undetected.”
In response to the audit’s findings, agency chief Stephen Cordi — hired four years ago to clean up the office after the $48 million embezzlement — promised in March to make the process more “transparent” by revising procedures to clarify that data should not be overwritten.
The tax office also “recently modified its procedures and processes to ensure better separation of duties,” Cordi wrote to auditors at the time. “. . . These new procedures include an additional level of approval to ensure that no one person can modify a record and then act as the approver of the change.”
An agency spokeswoman said last week that steps have been taken to address the problems pointed out in the audit. “Our procedures no longer allow for the over-writing of data,” the spokeswoman said in a written statement.
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