Dinsdale said: “What you want to do is make things as easy as possible for them to move your case. I would probably start a letter off with bulleted bolded points:
-THE ISSUE THAT NEEDS TO BE RESOLVED IS ___. MY ORIGINAL REQUEST WAS SENT aa/bb/cccc.
-on x-date, I sent xyz.
-on y-date, I spoke w/ Ms abc, and resent xyz.
-Please send z-doc to allow me to close the estate.”
And who would I send that letter to where it might do some good? Maybe Secretary of the Treasury Yellen?
“And then just wait.”
I’ve tried that many times already. It doesn’t seem to help.
I imagine you’ve already looked into this, but is this even allowable? I thought you have a legal right to be reasonably compensated for your time as an executor.
I’m trying to - but not able to - come up with an example of when I received an official communication from a governmental agency, but was not provided contact info for how/whom to contact. But, perhaps the IRS is different. If you would get some enjoyment/satisfaction out of sending something to Secretary Yellen, by all means, feel free to do so.
I’ve never heard of executors being barred from reasonable compensation, but again, not my bailiwick. IME, in all but 1 notable exception, when done by a family member, none have requested compensation. (The one who DID seek compensation also stole from her sisters. We figured it wasn’t worth the effort to try to wrest that out of her.)
So this sounds to me like a relatively minor issue. The bulk of the estate has been distributed, except for some relatively small amount, which none of the heirs urgently need. Sure, the IRS ought to work more promptly and communicate more effectively. My serious and well intentioned recommendation is to simply do the best you can and what your advisors advise, and then just put it out of your mind as best you can. And, I would personally give EXTREMELY limited ear to complaints of other heirs.
Just to be pedantic (isn’t that what the SDMB is here for), the bulk of my late aunt’s assets have been distributed but they were never part of the estate. The bulk of the estate has not been distributed. The only part of the estate that has been distributed were some items of personal property like household goods. I got the electric kettle.
All right. I don’t entirely understand the distinction between the assets and estate as you are using the terms. Apologies for my sloppiness. Are you saying that what could be placed in trust or PoD has been distributed? What remains in the estate? For my wife and me, the ONLY thing we own that is not in trust of PoD is our 2 cars (Subarus, not Bugattis.). But my sloppy mindset still thinks of everything that will go to my kids when we die as our “estate.”
What was the approximate value of the “assets” that have already been distributed, compared to the remaining “estate”?
For my gf’s auntie’s estate, things like life insurance were not part of the estate. The beneficiaries received their money fairly early in the process, and the executrix and her lawyer did not receive a percentage of the value of the policies.
Yeah, well IMO you could give some general idea to let us know how significant your issue is. All you have said is “not small.”
You are certainly free to choose how you wish to present your situation, but your decision to decline to give us ANY idea as to whether the assets distributes/remaining are in the 10s or 100s of $thousands, $millions, 10s of $millions …, causes this one reader to suspect that you are making a big deal out of relatively small potatoes. I may very well be wrong, but you have not given even the broadest of information for me to believe otherwise.
I have prepared my correspondence to the IRS to be sent by certified mail later this afternoon. I included only a copy of the letter they sent me per their instructions and a copy of the Letters Testamentary.
I did not include any type of cover letter. At this point, I don’t believe any of the correspondence is actually reviewed by a human being and any sort of cover letter would not serve any useful purpose and could only lead to further errors.
It is against my nature to send anything without a cover letter. It took about 6 years before I could make myself stop including a lengthy, detailed cover letter with my monthly rent check to my landlord.
Fuck that. I did a partial distribution of my parent’s estate and just had the estate pay for the wire fees. It’s a reasonable cost, and if anyone wanted to protest it, they could pound sand. It’ll be paid again when the final distribution is made as well.
And the trust document specifically says I can’t be paid for my service as trustee. Fine with me, but in my case it’s not really a hardship.
The IRS actually caught an error I made on last year’s form 1041, and is sending a refund check. But it’s less than $150 and isn’t holding up my dealing with the estate. So if the OP’s issue has been held up by the IRS working on my return, sorry. Cuss me out if it helps.
And not to mention- but that money is the dead persons, not theirs. Rex Stout once wrote that a will is a tug of war with a dead man’s guts.
Yes, the other agencies have real budgets, the GOP has gutted the IRS. There used to be a full Taxpayer service dept in every IRS office, and an IRS office in most towns- Modesto CA had one, for instance. All gone due to budget cuts. The GOP wants you to hate the iRS.
I get a paycheck and earn a small amount on the side in interest income and stock dividends. All of this is reported by the employer, banks and the investment firms, so there’s really no way I can cheat on my taxes. My guess is that most people are in the same situation and aren’t able to cheat. Personally, I’m all for a massive increase in tax audits since most of the cheating is by the extremely wealthy and corporations.
I got two letters from the IRS a couple of months ago, from two different offices, about my mother’s tax return (I’m her financial representative). One complained that she hadn’t included a valid SSN on the return, and the other complained that she hadn’t paid the amount owed.
The only reason my mother, a Canadian, was filing a US tax return was that we finally convinced her to sell her Florida condo, as, between COVID and her age, she was never going to be travelling south for the winter again. I ignored the first letter and replied to the second with a copy of the cheque sent with her return, clearing showing all the stamps, etc. from the IRS deposit.
If that doesn’t satisfy them, I’ll just ignore the issue - it’s their screwup and Mum’s never going to going to the US ever again, so will have zero effect for her.
Originally, the IRS kept telling me that they could not communicate with me at all because they did not have the Letters Testamentary and all letters were addressed to my late aunt directly. One even asked my late aunt to indicate her own date of death on the letter and return the letter to the IRS. The last few letters have been addressed to me as executor of her estate, including the one requesting I send the Letters Testamentary (which has already been sent a bunch of times). In theory at least, the lack of Letters Testamentary is what prevents them from sending letters addressed to me as executor of the estate.
I am convinced that all written correspondence from the IRS in this matter was created by poorly designed robots.
Despite having sent yet another copy of the Letters Testamentary as requested, which I sent by certified mail just to make sure, I just got another letter saying the return was incomplete because they did not have the Letters Testamentary. At least this time they offered to let me respond by fax. That saved me about ten dollars.
At first the letters all came from Austin. The penultimate letter was from Kansas City. The latest letter was from Austin. I now suspect the return is all screwed up in two different offices 750 miles apart.
After getting letters from Austin and Kansas City I got another letter from Fresno about two weeks ago advising me to wait another 60 days. About two weeks after receiving that letter I received the refund. They sent an old-timey paper check instead of the electronic deposit that had been originally set up but I’m not about to complain about that now. They even included a little interest since it took over 18 months since the return was filed.
Of course I am going to deposit it in the estate’s account tomorrow afternoon. But the check purports to be a negotiable draft drawn directly on the United States Treasury and not any bank. What do you think would happen if I took a week or two off and hitchhiked all the way to the United States Treasury in Washington D.C. and demanded payment:
a. They would just look at me funny.
b. I would never be admitted into the building.
c. Security would escort me to the street.
d. The FBI, NSA, CIA, SS, Homeland Security, or somebody like that would insist on a really long interview because I might be some sort of dangerous nutcase.
e They would politely explain other alternatives to negotiating the check other than presentment directly to the treasury.