PAYROLL WHOOPS

So as I wrote earlier this week, I had my severance package deposited into my account as a lump sum on Friday. This was a substantial chunk of change and I was taking suggestions as to how best allocate the money. I had come to the conclusion that as a first step I should probably move some of that money into a savings account that earns “high” interest. Mostly due to laziness, I haven’t moved the money yet.

Sometime this afternoon, I received an interesting e-mail from an HR representative at EA. It turns out that the payroll company that EA employs to handle paying the employees made a big boo-boo when they processed the severance package payouts. The payroll company neglected to deduct income tax from all the lump sum payments. So some of the money that was given to me and well over a hundred other people belongs to the government. The problem is that if you count the weekend, there was four whole days where people could have done anything with that money. With online services now, people could have even used the weekend to buy who knows what with the money they got.

The e-mail I received did not mention the exact the details in which the error would be corrected. I’m guessing they just figured out what went wrong and wanted to tell us as soon as possible so that we could cancel all our orders of booze and hookers. For each laid off employee, they’ll need to calculate how much tax needs to be deducted and then figure out how to get that tax money back from us. Do we give the money directly to the government? Will the money be electronically transferred out from our accounts? I am sure they’ll come up with some clever solution quite quickly.

It’s a good thing I didn’t do anything foolish with that money!

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