Having had a child last year, Airman and I are eligible for that great new child tax credit. You know, the one the Bushistas trumpeted as the Best Idea Since Sliced Bread. This thread is not about the politics of the check in front of me.
This thread is about the fact that our refund in April was offset by about $390 and change from an old federal debt I had. No biggie; it’s now paid and life can go on.
I got the advance check in the mail, and it’s for a whopping ten bucks. Less than that, actually, but let’s not split hairs. Turns out THAT was offset for the same debt that was allegedly paid last spring. So I called the agency I owed the money to, and the women I talked to doesn’t show any record of getting the money in April.
Now I have to get this mess straightened out with the IRS. I’ve tried both numbers, and have not been able to talk to a live agent. (Notice that I’m not calling them people. They’re not; if they were, they wouldn’t be working for the IRS.) I’ve gotten lots of information that I already knew, which I suppose is something.
So now I have to go to Harrisburg and talk to a live person in person. This is a day out of my life over something that could be initiated by telephone.
I can now see the appeal of the tax-resistance movement.
I feel your pain. We got our refund check ($2,000—it’s times like these I am glad we have 5 kids) and promptly used it to buy new tires for my vehicle and pay off a credit card.
Jump 2 weeks later after we have already spent the check. We get a nice little package from the IRS stating that they have done a random audit of our 2001 taxes and we made an error and didn’t calculate a penalty on some money we took out of our 401 k to buy our house. We now owe them $4,100.
Now if I had gotten the little package BEFORE the refund check then I could have paid half of this damn debt off and financed the rest.
But, as it stands, we are going to have to figure out some other way to pay this.
I’ve never had a problem with the IRS. In fact, they were quite helpful last April in getting me all of my money back and walked me through several forms over the phone.
Having some tough experience with the IRS, (three separate bills that totaled $20K), I found there were some pretty understanding people working there, and they could be quite flexible. I was able to talk them out of garnishing my wages and they set up an installment plan to pay off the debt. In the first round of negotiations they wanted a monthly amount that would have sent me into bankruptcy, but they finally settled on an amount (IIRC $180.00) I could afford per month. As my finances improved I increased the monthly amount I paid. The interest charged on the unpaid balance was minimal and after I bought my house and started to get some large tax refunds, which the IRS kept and applied to the debt, I was able to pay them off in just over 3 years.
Something like that is best handled by correspondance, in any case. Write a careful, fact-filled letter with no ranting. Mail it- attach copies of everything. If they don’t give you a response in 30 days, go to “Problem Resolution” (which is now the Taxpayer Advocates Office" I think).
You will only get angry at the Office- this is something that needs to be carefully researched.
Some times you just can’t get "instant gratification’. I will also point out that YOUR Congress has been systematically cutting the IRS’s budget. If Congress allocated anough money, you could get a 100% correct answer 100% of the time after one ring, and speak to one person. All you have to do is pay for it. Right now, you are paying for mediocre>average service, and that is what you get. I don’t know why anyone would expect anything different.
If you want crappy service & “jackbooted thugs” , try dealing with INS or the Calif FTB. After dealing with either, you’ll fall down and kiss the feet of that " barely adequate IRS service" that so many get.
The IRS are a bunch of fascist bastards. Some years ago, my wife (then girlfriend) hired a woman to take care of her mother (stroke). She paid the woman, and paid her social security, all legal and aboveboard. Two years later, our bank account gets frozen by the IRS. A call to Bastard Central reveals that my wife neglected to turn in a form stating that we had terminated the woman’s employment. For this, they whacked us $700. No amount of explanation would suffice. The fact that she had faithfully paid taxes since age 18 and tried to do the right thing made no difference.
The next year, they whacked us again, with no explanation. The third year, we get a refund check for the entire amount, STILL with no explanation. Guess I should be grateful that we got the money back, but they had little right to it in the first place. Gestapo jack-booted thugs, sez I.
I called my congressman, out of sheer frustration. If I’m willing to be patient, they’re willing to investigate this mess, and it may be more complicated than it appears.
The IRS and I sent the same $600 back and forth from the last “rebate.” See, I’d filed electronically, and they didn’t get the payment. So I didn’t get the rebate. So I immediately wrote my check for my back taxes (and interest and penalties) and mailed it in - minus the $600 per my conversation with the nice agent who told me what I needed to do (and was willing to tell me how to get the penalties waived, since they saw the electronic transfer hit, it just didn’t complete - and were willing to believe I’d tried to pay - but it wasn’t worth the bother). And then they sent me the $600. And I sent it back to them, and they sent it back to me, and I sent it back to them - and there it ended.
Something is badly screwed up with the IRS systems and processes.
This year they solved the problem for me - despite having two children, we don’t qualify for the rebate. Somehow, I can’t say I’m too sorry.
(DrDeth is right though, just be thankful you aren’t dealing with the INS. The people using the IRS are citizens and vote - therefore their inadequate level of service is watched by our congresspeople. INS on the other hand is seen as a burden by the many taxpayers who don’t know why we want forrinners in the country anyway and don’t think the INS does their job. So their inadquate level of service is truly inadequate. In some INS districts you only get service by dealing with your congressperson. Now there is efficiency.)
Well, considering the Patriot Act and the IRS monitoring this board I think you folks better be very very careful what you say.
I know I certainly support our great nation and George W. and the IRS and John Ashcroft and the war and anything else that our great President supports.
Contact them first ONLY if they owe YOU money. If you owe them money, let them contact you first.
Never, ever, never send the IRS a check without also including some type of form they sent you to identify the reason for the check.
If there is a foul-up and they owe you money, it may take 12 to 18 months to get your money refunded.
Once you have succeeded in getting written correspondence from them (usually some kind of form), ALWAYS include a copy of that correspondence with any written reply you make.
If you owe the IRS a tidy sum, they WILL work with you, they WILL negotiate a plan of payment.
ALWAYS cash and deposit a check sent to you by the IRS. NEVER return a check to the IRS, even if you believe you shouldn’t have received the money. If there is a problem, they will let you know.
If they contact you, don’t ignore them, they have ways of making your life miserable.
Surely there is room for some personal responsibility. Presumably you knew when you raided your 401k that there were taxes/penalties to pay. You are pissed off because you made a mistake and the IRS has noticed it? The IRS is possibly being generous in treating it as a mistake rather than a deliberate attempt to underpay taxes.
And I would suggest paying closer attention to your withholding taxes if you are giving the government an interest-free loan of $2,000 a year.
IIWPOTUS, that would be prime directive #1: simplify things for Joe and Jane Doe. Instead of 156 forms and a package X that rivals most town phone books, let’s make it simple. If you are a business collecting revenue from anyone in the USA, you pay a flat 10% tax on net revenue, e.g. business profit. Doesn’t matter if you are located in Bermuda, Europe, or Mars, you pay the tax.
Personal income tax would be similarly fixed at a flat percentage, regardless of income source: wages, dividends, interest, box 'o money fell out the sky, whatever. No deductions, no credits, no nothin, other than compute what you received and multiply by the decimal amount. Cut the check and call it a day.
No doubt the simplicity will offend so many people that it will never be adopted, but it was a thought. :dubious:
We thought we had paid all the penalties for withdrawing money from the IRA. Obviously there’s personal responsibility – we owe them additional money. We just thought we had paid it already.
We paid a ton of attention to our withholding. In case you’re not aware, the Bush administration has upped the Child-care Tax Credit retroactive to 2002. That means families with children who fall into certain income brackets qualify for an additional $400 per child tax credit. The Bush administration is mailing those tax credit checks to the families in question.
I would suggest paying closer attention to details and facts before posting out of your butt on a message board. You’re giving ignorance a free permanent commercial.
I dunno, Sauron, your wife definitely made it sound as if she blamed the IRS for this little screwup. And it’s not their fault at all. Unforutnate, obviously, but not something that is the IRS’s responsiblity. You guys messed up on your filing, plain and simple.
Not that you can be blamed with all the rules and regulations one must follow. What did your accountant have to say about how he messed up your taxes?
Nope, Aries28 places no blame with the IRS. Or, rather, the only blame we can place on them is not letting us know about the mistake in our taxes earlier.
Think about it … the IRS has audited our 2001 taxes. We did those taxes in early 2002. Now, 20 months later, they’re letting us know about a problem with the taxes. Not unusual, certainly. This kind of stuff happens all the time.
But in our case, we found out about a $4100 tax bill mere days after getting (and using) an unexpected $2000 credit. That’s what’s so frustrating. Had we known about the tax bill just a few days earlier, we could have shifted the tax credit to cover some of the expense.
As for the actual screwup, it’s completely mine. I did the taxes, I made the mistake. Aries28 has been kind enough, so far, not to ram fire ants dipped in acid deep into my anus. I figure it’s only a matter of time, though.
…and maybe we just need a federal tax system that a reasonable person can fucking understand. The IRS is just trying to enforce regulations that are incomprehensible. As a formerly self-employed worker, I know the pain of IRS audits. Generally, I’ve found it’s just easier to simply pay the money than to try to fight it.
Maybe someone can answer this silly question: why are our taxes so complicated? No one should have to get a lawyer to handle something as basic as paying taxes, and yet thats exactly what has happened with our current system. Mine are simple to do. Single guy, no house, no kids, one job. Filed in about 20 minutes. God help the people that have to fight through confusing forms, take deductions, or god forbid have to actually talk to someone from the IRS just to comply with the letter of the law. It should be simple and easy (like a flat tax) rather than something confusing, unsure, and in the end a colossal waste of time and money. We shouldn’t have to struggle with forms and figures to stay legal.