Southampton School Committee learns of missing IRS payroll filings dating to 2022

EASTHAMPTON -- November 13, 2024, Southampton School Committee heard that 20 payrolls from fiscal year 2024 and all payroll from fiscal year 2025 are missing from the district's general ledger, complicating the launch of the FY26 budget process. The district's new business administrator told the committee Wednesday that a switch from Tyler Technologies to an outside processor called Harper's left no automated path to feed payroll data back into the financial system, requiring time-consuming manual journal entries as a stopgap; a full fix by returning to Tyler's built-in payroll module cannot happen before January 2026. She also disclosed that on November 12 the district received a same-day IRS summons over two unfiled Form 941 quarterly payroll tax returns from calendar year 2022, representing roughly $200,000, funds that had been collected from employees and remitted to the government but never formally reported. Auditors are expected on site by the end of November, and the district has received a state extension until February 1 for end-of-year financial reports.