Taxman on line

THE tax collector may be going high-tech. Yesterday Digital Systems International Inc. introduced a product to improve the efficiency of the state government officials who try to track down people who haven't paid enough taxes.

Nationwide, delinquent taxes are a $7 billion drain on state budgets, the Redmond, Wash., company says. It's new product, Revenue Management System (RMS), is puts the process of locating delinquent taxpayers onto workstation computers for easy tracking. The RMS product helped increase tax collection contacts by 150 percent in a recent six-month test in Idaho.

``We're talking to a number of large states,'' as well as small ones, says Jeanne Miller of Digital Systems, which customizes its products for each client. RMS sells for about $50,000 plus $2,400 per workstation, or it can be paid for by giving the company a small percentage of the resulting new tax revenues.