Tangle With the IRS! A True Learning Experience of a Young Oregon Blue Collar Worker

Why does such an important federal agency continue to make life so difficult and unfair for it's citizens?

Trust him as far as you can throw him Image courtesy: kotaku.com

(SALEM) - This is a story about an individual who made the mistake of not having all his “I's” dotted or his “T's” crossed. This man and his significant other have lived together for almost ten years. He is an average blue-collar worker and she is a stay-at-home mom. They have had two children together. One is almost six years of age and the other is seven.

For the last nine years this blue-collar worker has provided a home for his significant other and has filed taxes claiming her as a dependent. When their children were born, he claimed them as his dependants, also.

Unfortunately, upon the birth of their first daughter, the mother gave her last name and not the father’s. This didn’t seem to be an issue. For five years it was not, as each year he faithfully filed his taxes. Suddenly this working man received a letter from the IRS stating he was being audited and would not be receiving his refund. The issue was the head-of-household status and the earned income credit. Upon calling the IRS he was told his name was just arbitrarily pulled out for auditing. They said he would be receiving a letter from them with details.

The letter arrived stating he had to prove residency and parental rights to his oldest daughter. He had to prove that she actually was his child and that she really had been living with him all this time. He provided documents from the school, from social service agencies, and provided a copy of rental agreement showing all of their names on it. He had copies of documents from their insurance company showing the names of the couple and their children. All this information was sent in to the IRS.

A letter was received apologizing for not being able to get to the materials received but they would be getting back to him as soon as they did this.

They did get back to him, stating they now needed a copy of the oldest daughter’s birth certificate showing the father’s name. The original birth certificate had burned up in a fire and they had to provide a notarized affidavit to the state in able to get a new birth certificate showing parental name change of his daughter to his last name. This was done and sent to the IRS. The blue-collar worker even went to the local IRS to have them fax the documents to the number given to them in the letter they received. The local IRS was very helpful, by the way, but didn’t really have a handle as to why all of this was necessary.

Thinking all was completed, they waited for their much needed tax refund, but instead they got another letter stating the requested documents had never been received and that the case for both years was closed. They had to start all over again by filing a 1040X and provide the IRS with all the information that had previously sent.

Now, the lesson learned for this young couple was to... always keep copies of every transaction taking place with the IRS, document every conversation, and get names of the people that you talk to. Make sure you comply with the dates given and don’t ever assume that the internal structure of our federal Internal Revenue Service really knows that each other are doing!

So now it’s back to first base for the young blue-collar worker, who hopes the system will work for him this time and hopefully by next year when he files his taxes again it will all be cleared up and he will get his refunds back. Does anyone want to start taking bets on this one?

Reports From Iraq

Salem-News.com Top Stories
Winter Storm and High Wind Warnings Blow into NorthWest

---

Police Say Driving Rampage Ends in Fatal Shots

---

Afghanistan, the Unlearned Lesson

---

Greenscam: Scientific Mass Manipulation in Action

---

Living the Lie: Agent Orange Activist Confronts Monsanto

---

Actually, my bank does not do what MarkKpic describes. If the error is due to the bank's fault-the error is corrected and any and all charges are reversed. If the error is on the part of the client, my bank may still reverse any and all charges provided it is not a recurring error; plus they will explain how the error occurred and how to prevent it in the future. Plus, while I am no government apologist, if the file was pulled at random, then the audit should go on. With nearly 300 million Americans, and only a select few at the top, it makes sense that the audits happen to the average citizen as well. Now, the bungling of the paperwork and "evidence" is not to be excused, the fact of the audit alone is no reason to nail the IRS. If they only focused on those who make millions and billions, we would complain that the IRS is paying workers who do nothing all day as those audits would not take up much of their time.

Just like with banks, if there is an error in THEIR favor, it will take 3 years, a dozen attorneys, mountains of paperwork and prayers to see any resolve. When the error is in YOUR favor, they'll "fix it" before the ink on your statement is dry. ...and you'll be responsible for any fees, charges or expenses incurred by them. It's funny, really. There are billionaires who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid paying taxes on income and real estate, and the IRS goes after the average joe who just wants to do the right thing. ..couldn't have anything to do with the fact that he cant afford to hire Alan Dershowitz, could it?

They should do to the I.R.S. what Bernadette Devlin wanted to do to England.

Name:

Enter the text from the image to confirm you are human.(Cookies are required)

HTML tags and certain characters are removed - (numbers, letters only or post may be cut short.) certain words are banned to stop spammers. All comments and messages are approved by people and self promotional links or unacceptable comments are denied.