IRS confusion creates frustration

For six months, the IRS thought I was someone who owed them money on a newly discovered, three-year-old tax debt.
I’ll skip to the happy ever after for a minute — they recently sent me a two sentence letter saying — wait, you’re right, you don’t. (I’m paraphrasing. They were more formal).
The in between wasn’t so succinct or easy.
It started with a 10-page letter in February saying I underreported my 2018 income and giving the name of a business I haven’t done business with.
They helpfully (sarcasm intended) provided the account number that wasn’t mine and an address for a permanently closed office (my own Googling would later reveal).
My first step after receiving the letter was to dig out my tax returns and go over all of the numbers I’d submitted, not including that account, which I didn’t understand the importance of at first.
Everything looked right to me.
And then I tried to call the phone number provided by the IRS. And tried. And tried.
I finally went to a local tax preparer with all of my documents, prepared to get answers. The very helpful agent (no sarcasm this time) explained they couldn’t, in fact, help. But they did explain what the IRS thought I’d done.
Lacking any other options, I finally mailed the paperwork back to the IRS with the box saying “I disagree” check marked and a note added, “Would someone please call me?”
And that was the last I heard of it for about three months.
Then the day I left for a long-awaited and much-needed family vacation, it was back. The same form letter, a few pages longer, saying you owe us money.
It gave me until August this time to check the same boxes — either I agree and will pay, or I don’t agree.
It also offered the new option this time of providing the taxpayer ID number of anyone I thought might owe the money if I didn’t.
I won’t share exactly what I thought about my new option. We’re a family-friendly paper.
I won’t lie. I was frustrated.
But it’s not August and work was pretty busy in May.
So I stuck the letter in a drawer to be dealt with at a future date.
And then recently the IRS sent that other letter. That single page that says, guess what, you don’t owe us anything from 2018.
The truth is my complaint isn’t about however the error occurred.
Things happen. Numbers get transposed. Everyone makes mistakes.
The part that I take exception to (as my grandmother would have said less politely) is they gave me no good way to resolve the matter.
And apparently didn’t read my first response (which was sent by their first deadline by the way), before mailing a new request for money.
I would have been happy even to email someone if I couldn’t talk or meet with the IRS in person.
The inability to have simple questions answered in a simple way creates a lot of frustrations in our technology-driven world filled with all of the gadgets that are supposed to make our lives ever so much easier.
The automated telephone systems that urge you to go to a website that can’t provide any more information than you already have can’t fix every problem.
Sometimes the good, old-fashioned sit down and chat is a lot better option.
Can I press 3 for that one?
Donna Farley is the editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley.dar@gmail.com.