The IRS sent me a letter claiming there was a miscalculation in my Recovery Rebate Credit. They listed possible reasons, such as wrong SSN (it isn’t), wrong name of dependent (I don’t have any), adjusted gross income exceeded $75,000 (no effin way), or amount was computed incorrectly. I did my taxes online through H&R Block, and looked at my return. It had a detailed section of how my RRC was calculated, and I couldn’t find any errors.
The IRS says I have 60 days to contact them if I have a disagreement. I tried calling them, and after going through a bunch of voice menus, was told they had too many calls to get to me today and to try again later. I’m wondering if this is an “Oops, we shouldn’t have sent out so many stimulus checks” moment and they’re trying to sucker me into returning the check and relying on the Kafka-esque bureaucratic process to discourage me from challenging them.
I was on UI for a bit in the year 2020, when they had the additional UI payments. The federal government did n’ttax the extra UI, but the state government did. So I got a letter that my state taxes were amended to reflect this.
It’s not a scam - well, not likely. According to this Wall Street Journal article (paywall, though, for non-subscribers), the IRS mailed out approximately 11,000,000 “math error” notices so far this year.
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really offer a lot of remedies - in fact, the point of the article is how difficult it is to both decipher what the possible error is (as described by the OP) and what to do about it, apart from calling and hoping you get a person eventually.
A former IRS lawyer quoted in the article does say the IRS is supposed to drop an assessment and reconsider the case if the taxpayer requests an “abatement” during the 60-day response period.
But yeah, as Knowed_Out said, it sounds like you have to call the IRS and hope you get a person. By Collins’ analysis, only 8% of 173,000,000 callers reached an IRS employee in the first six months of 2021 - good luck!
Not like that, but I got a letter for the IRS the day I came home from moving my daughter into her dorm saying that I overpaid my 2021 taxes by $1.50… but no worries, they applied it to my back-owed balance of $11,400 from 2017.
I’ve never owed such a vast sum of taxes ever; after being on hold for 4 freaking hours, I was informed that they don’t have a record of a return for me for that year, so they just… made one up on their own, I guess? No idea. Why they wouldn’t have contacted me about it, I don’t have any idea; it isn’t like I’ve lived in the same place for 6 years now, and worked at the same place for over twenty or anything…
I did my 92 year old mothers through H&R Block. And my Mom got sent a few notices. Did buy all the ‘we will help you’ add on’s but it was all very confusing. And now the IRS want’s ~ $300 or so from my mom. She just want’s to ignore it. Something messed up. But it wasn’t me.
I had my first stimulus check stolen from my mailbox. I sent them notice and the IRS sent me a new one but now I got a letter saying both checks were cashed (and the signatures on one of the checks were clearly fake). They sent me a form with scans of both checks and the option to dispute either one, so I disputed the clearly fake one.
I got the same notice which said they’ll audit if I contest their decision without providing additional information. I qualified for the second stimulus check of $600 but never received it. They sent me something several months ago that said I should have received the EIP card, which I never did. Since the remedy appeared to be the Recovery Rebate Credit on my taxes, I did that. Does this mean I’ll never see the $600 I was entitled to?
OP, my situation is not quite the same, but you might find it helpful. I got a letter from the IRS about 5 weeks ago that said I’d substantially underpaid my taxes. Like you, I’d used an online program (Turbotax), and like you, I knew I hadn’t neglected any income. And I, too, got the “We’re too busy to answer the phone” message every time I called.
Two things to note:
The IRS is short-staffed. I think this makes errors on their part more likely.
I went to a CPA, who determined I did not, in fact, owe any taxes, and who wrote the IRS and attached all kinds of documents.
I highly recommend hiring a CPA with experience in taxes. Someone in the know told me appeals coming from CPA’s carry more weight than those filed by individuals. It cost me $300, but it was well worth it.
It’s not this. I actually got a notice telling me to contact them if I didn’t receive my stimulus money. They knew I did not file a tax return in 2020 (as I did not have any taxable income), and wanted to make sure I did get my money.
It sounds to me like they’re trying to make sure everyone entitled to the money got their money, and that no one double dipped or stole someone else’s money.
I don’t know about the OP, but it sounds to me like someone stole and used @Newtosite’s EIP card.
Did the notice from IRS include a form you could fill out and mail back to them, on which you could indicate if you agree or disagree with he notice? I got a notice once like that, demanding a bunch of money that I didn’t really owe them. I checked the box “Completely disagree with this” and sent it back, along with a brief cover letter and copies of some documents that I thought would prove my case.
Several weeks later, I got another notice advising me that those documents did indeed prove my case, and I didn’t owe them anything.
Thus my question to the OP: Was there anything in that notice you can send back to them to dispute their claim? I’m thinking that doing these kind of things on paper, via U. S. snail mail, is better than trying to get a live carbon-based unit on the phone who may or may not be helpful.
You don’t have a recently dead parent, right? Last year the IRS really did contact the heirs of some recently deceased SOC recipients whom they made stimulus direct deposits into the same accounts that their SOC payments went because they never bothered to check if the people were still alive before getting the money out.
Fortunately, September 2019 had been long enough for them to realize my dad was dead so I didn’t have that piled onto my executrix duties…
When I was a kid, I remember my dad being afraid of the IRS. One year he got a letter demanding $95. He took the letter to the guy who did his taxes. The guy found the IRS error; they mistook a “2” for a “5” kind of thing. He told my dad he’d send an explanation, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. He sent a money order for $95 to the IRS.
Here’s the deal: If you entered the wrong stimulus amount on your tax return, they sent you a letter saying they adjusted your return, and showed the adjustment amount. You would have received this a month or two after you filed your return. Mine came in March.
THAT letter, though, should have contained a line saying you have 60 days to dispute the change they made. Since it didn’t, they sent this second long, vague and confusing letter just so they could tell you that you now have 60 days to file a dispute. It would have made more sense, if they had just re-sent the original letters (that showed everything you need to know) and added a heading that it is being re-sent to let you know you have 60 days from the date of the second letter to file a dispute. But, they didn’t do that, so now they are being flooded with calls. Whoever wrote that second letter should be fired.