Feb. 14, 2002 – What's good for the goose apparently doesn't matter for the gander when it comes to distributing 2001 W-2 forms to employees.
The Internal Revenue Bureau sent out a release telling private-sector employers on Jan. 30 that if they didn't get their W-2 forms out to their workers by Jan. 31, they would face a fine of $50 a day per employee until they did.
As of Thursday afternoon, government workers, far and away the largest employee group in the territory, still hadn't received theirs.
No explanation was readily available. "I don't know why, and I've had no luck in finding out," Government House spokeswoman Rina Jacobs-McBrowne said.
She referred questions to Finance Commissioner Bernice Turnbull, who did not return a telephone call requesting comment. The Internal Revenue Bureau director, Louis Willis, was out of the office all afternoon and could not be reached.
While Jacobs-McBrowne said she is all set to do her income tax return as soon as she gets her W-2 form, others weren't in any big hurry to see theirs arrive. "I'm not really thinking about it," Corrine Matthias, an assistant to St. John Administrator Julien Harley, said.
One business owner who found it unfair that the government could be late with its W-2's at will while the private sector could not was David Holzman, owner of Innovative Builders on St. John. "Why should the government be the exception to the rule?" he asked.
But Holzman also saw it as business as usual for the government. "They're always a day late and a dollar short," he commented.