OREGON TAX FAX WOES

The Oregon Department of Revenue is experiencing an interruption in fax service that has affected taxpayer communications to two of the agency's key return processing units.

Since Friday afternoon, Revenue has received 644 fax submissions to its Electronic Funds Transfer Unit (EFT) and Suspense Unit that were incomplete due to service problems. "Taxpayers sending the faxes would have every reason to think they had a successful transmission, but we received a distorted or partial image," Policy and Systems Manager Megan Denison said.

Revenue is asking all taxpayers who recently used the affected lines to resend their faxed information as soon as possible. The agency can identify the senders of about a quarter of the failed faxes and will attempt to contact them, Denison said.

The outage affecting Suspense is ongoing. Taxpayers who try to use the unit's fax numbers (503-945-8786 and 503-945-8009) will receive a recorded message that the line has been disconnected and is no longer in service. Revenue has set up an alternate fax number (503-945-8584) that should be used until further notice. Anyone who sent Suspense a fax between Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning needs to resend the fax to 503-945-8584 or mail their information to the address on their request letter.

The Suspense fax outage mainly affects taxpayers who are attempting to provide additional documentation to Revenue regarding the processing of their tax returns. These taxpayers could experience a tax refund delay or a tax return adjustment if the agency does not receive this information. Because of this, Revenue will send a second request for information to any taxpayers who might have been affected by the outage.

"We acknowledge this outage affects taxpayers who were doing their best to respond to our letters, and who through no fault of their own are being inconvenienced," Denison said. "That's why we are doing everything we can with the information we have to reach out to them."

The problem affecting the EFT fax line has been resolved. Taxpayers who sent a fax to EFT using 503-947-2016 between Friday afternoon and Monday evening need to resend their fax using either that number or alternate number 503-345-2353.

The EFT fax outage mainly affects businesses communicating with Revenue about payroll, withholding, or corporate tax issues. These businesses use electronic funds transfers to make payments to the agency. In general, these miscommunications only will cause a delay setting up or making changes to EFT accounts.

Revenue is working with its vendor, Concord Technologies, to resolve the ongoing outage affecting the Suspense Unit fax line. At this point, there is no estimated time frame for restoration of regular fax service.