YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

The Customer Assistance Bureau (CAB) supervises approximately 170 fee offices and 11 branch offices throughout the state.� Although the CAB's function is to monitor the field offices, the CAB employs approximately fifty revenue licensing technicians who process drivers license transactions in the fee offices.� Based upon the current number of revenue licensing technicians, resources totaling approximately $1.2 million will be provided to the fee offices through revenue licensing technicians' salaries and benefits during the year ended June 30, 2002.� �The fee agent contract provides that the fee agents shall provide adequate staff to care for the business demands of the office.� The fee agents receive the contracted agent fee for transactions processed by the revenue licensing technicians.� In addition, the CAB assigns twelve field representatives to provide on-site monitoring of the fee and branch offices.� Numerous field representative reports indicate the field representatives performed fee agent duties.� By performing fee office duties, the CAB is diverting state resources to fee agents who already receive a fee for each transaction processed.    

Information on the General Registration System (GRS) is not always accurate and up-to-date.� A record of all Missouri motor vehicle transactions is maintained on the GRS.� As of July 2001, approximately 549,000 motor vehicle transactions were on the Error File and, as a result, were not recorded on the GRS.� Approximately 306,000 of the transactions on the Error File were at least ten months old.� Failure to resolve transactions on the Error File results in incomplete and inaccurate GRS records, which are accessed by various law enforcement officials, and increases the risk that misappropriation of funds by field offices will not be detected in a timely manner. 

State law allows leasing companies to have the option of paying sales or use tax on items to be leased or rented at the point of registration or to pay sales or use tax as the items are being leased or rented.� ��The current system of reporting does not require the companies to identify the particular items on which the sales and use taxes were collected on lease/rental proceeds.� As a result, the Division of Taxation cannot effectively monitor whether the state is collecting at least as much sales tax by allowing lease/rental companies to collect and submit taxes on the amount charged for each rental or lease agreement as would have been collected if the sales or use taxes had to be paid upon titling the vehicles. 

Concerns were also noted related to �inventory procedures, unreported transactions, motor vehicle processing procedures, and field monitoring procedures. 

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