Officials order man to pay 50-cent debt

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian authorities sent a debt collector to a man's house after he underpaid his trash collection bill by 36 euro cents, about 50 U.S. cents, a newspaper said on Thursday.

The man, from a village in Lower Austria province, told Kronen Zeitung that he had accidentally overlooked the 36 cents after the decimal place on his bill for 236.36 euros ($315).

The slip-up set the bureaucratic ball rolling, said a spokeswoman from the court which chased the debt.

"We also don't completely understand why the court reacted this way to such a trifling invoice," she said. The bailiff's visit cost the man 5 euros.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall)