DICKINSON (AP) - An accounting error dating back to 1992 has left the city of Dickinson and its employees owing $94,000 in taxes, the city attorney says.

City Attorney Matt Kolling told commissioners on Monday that the error in payroll accounting continued until the first financial quarter this year. He said the Internal Revenue Service requires payment only for three years worth of back taxes.

The City Commission must decide how to pay the overdue taxes which, technically, are owed evenly by both the city and its employees, City Administrator Greg Sund said.

"What the commission will have to grapple with is, do we take on the full $94,000 liability or do you want to go back and try to collect the other 50 percent from city employees?" Mayor Dennis Johnson said.

"We all know the employees didn't do anything wrong," Johnson said.

For 16 years, the city had been deducting Social Security and Medicare taxes from workers' paychecks after contributions to retirement plans had been subtracted, said city accounting manager Tina Johnson. The city's matching contributions to workers' plans were also going untaxed, she said.

The IRS now requires that such taxes, known as FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) taxes, be withheld before retirement contributions are made, Kolling said.

"The sad thing is, here we were going on the recommendations of our attorney at the time," Sund said. "The upside is, it's better that we find the problem than the IRS finds the problem."

The blunder was caught earlier this spring when Tina Johnson and the city's current law firm were reviewing the books.

Sund said the city will refile returns on its payroll taxes for each quarter reaching back to 2005.

The City Commission probably will take up the issue of how to pay the overdue taxes at its next meeting on June 16. Johnson said the money to pay the taxes would likely come from the city's general fund, which currently has a surplus.

If commissioners choose to pay the employee's share, that payment will be taxable as wages, Tina Johnson said.

The city must resolve the matter before the end of July, the deadline for filing payroll taxes for the second quarter. As of this quarter, the city is correctly deducting FICA taxes, Tina Johnson said.