The Friday announcement from the two sides, which comes three days before the federal income tax deadline, also comes as most states continue to face grim economic situations. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported last month that, as of that point, 44 states had projected a fiscal 2012 shortfall.
Thomas Mattox, New York’s tax commissioner, noted his own state’s fiscal situation in a statement praising the IBM technology. IBM and New York have worked together since 1999 on bolstering the tax department’s use of analytics.
“In this difficult economic climate, another very important result for us is that in many cases the analytics inform us that we don’t have to take an aggressive action — a less intrusive path will be as effective,” said Mattox. “This has allowed us, when appropriate, to lighten our impact on taxpayer credit ratings long term while still collecting outstanding tax liabilities due to New York State.”
In an interview with The Hill, Shaun Barry of IBM said the Optimizer had outpaced early expectations. Around a year ago, a New York tax official predicted the technology would collect an additional $100 million for the state over three years.
Barry added that he had gotten positive initial feedback on the reported New York figure from officials from other state governments, as well as foreign ones. But he said it was “premature” to say when or if the Optimizer would be installed elsewhere.
“Most governments had said, ‘Come back when you’ve got a number,’ ” said Barry, the company’s global leader for fraud-management solutions. “But there does seem to be great interest.”