I wonder what the IRS and/or the shareholders would say if Wal-Mart would state "that its books are in such disarray that an audit is impossible".

This is the right answer. DFAS is not only the largest payroll department in the U.S. (probably the world, unless the Chinese Army has something similiar) but the pay and benefit system is incredibly complex, with different amounts being disbursed depending on (just to name a few) your rank, marriage status, number of children, years of service, geographic location, type of job specialty, type of job duty, whether we're at war, what type of housing you live in, whether your job location offers meals or not. And all of these can change multiple times during the year.

None of this excuses errors, but it's the members' responsibility to notice any errors and report them to their disbursing office. Once reported, the vast majority of errors are fixed within two weeks.

Payroll system responsible for paying 2.7 million people, budget of $1.3 billion. That's $500 per employee per year, which is fucking outrageous. I guarantee you that Wal-Mart isn't spending anywhere near that amount of money on payroll.

Ouch. That comment seemed to me to be to be a very ill-considered and off-handed slap down.

Yes, payroll systems have problems, but, frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. DoD is another level of hell away from typical corporate accounting problems. The books don't balance -- they don't have to balance. There's no auditing system in place. Nobody can really tell where the money is coming from or where it's going. Contractors with sweetheart deals sell and maintain systems long after they've gone obsolete. At one point during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I heard from an inside source that some shipping containers were missing in-country and nobody could find them -- some tens of thousands of shipping containers.

I could go on, but I won't. This is something you really need to see for yourself to believe. This ain't WalMart or the mom-and-pop corner grocery store.