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The Glories of the IRS
It’s April 15. Good Friday is in three days, Easter in five days, and the birthday of Immanuel Kant in seven days. But this day is extra special. It’s a day to take some time to reflect on how much we have to be thankful for from the federal government, and to celebrate with family and friends.
On this day, my mother managed to get us some jpegs of recent letters from the Internal Revenue Service. The letters are dated to just eight days ago, but the Silmarillionesque backstory stretches back into the Elder Days–all the way back to the year 2021 when the federal government gave my dear wife and me five checks for a total of $5,356.
In their wisdom, they were mailing Advance Child Tax Credits to a couple who had never asked for them and who would have had to return them with interest the next year if we had cashed them. You see, we’ve been overseas, and you can’t get a Child Tax Credit handout when you use the Foreign-Earned Income Credit.
Ah, yes–I understand how you feel as you read this. You feel like a small Hobbit sitting in Rivendell, listening to Elrond tell tales of the glories of Gondolin That Was.
Eventually the IRS, in its wisdom, managed to inform us after wasted worries and various overseas phone calls that all we needed to do was void the checks. My wife recalls a little, and my own memories fade. As I did a Ctr-F in my notes, much like Gandalf descending to the deepest records room under Gondor, I found it written that the voided checks are safe in a safe in Texas.
What happened this many an age later, you wonder? Well, the IRS has informed us that they have received from us the checks we never mailed them and are now processing them.
Don’t the great tales never end? It doesn’t matter if the checks should never have been sent, or that we told them three years ago that we never wanted them; the IRS is never late, I tell you–in their wisdom, they update your information precisely when they intend to!
They should finish in about two more months, and then we may be blessed to hear again from them.
I can’t wait.
Published in General
Back in 2009, when I bought my place in Phoenix, I was eligible for the first-time homebuyers credit, a REFUNDABLE credit (meaning it could be paid back to you even if you had no taxable income or taxes withheld) for 10% of the purchase price, up to a $6,000 credit/refund.
As it happens, the place I bought was at $60k meaning I’d get the full amount of the credit, and it was supposed to be my down payment.
Yet, as “supposed to be” shows, it didn’t happen.
What happened was that the credit was “seized” in part by the IRS because I supposedly owed about $1500 in taxes, and the rest by Social Security because of a claim that I’d been “overpaid.” Both were wrong, but it took a while to get sorted out.
I had to get the IRS part fixed first, otherwise any refund (re-refund?) from SS would just have gone to the IRS.
It turns out that the seller of a place I’d thought about buying earlier, had turned in tax returns claiming to be mine, showing higher income than I’d actually had, in attempting to secure a loan.
Fortunately the IRS office in Phoenix had a senior “wizard” agent who re-filed everything and got that cleared. I received that part of the credit back, fairly promptly.
It took longer to fix Social Security, and I had been working with a couple different areas of that bureaucracy. Once that was done, they somehow managed to re-refund their part of it back to me, TWICE. Once from each “department,” I suppose. And since both amounts were identical, I guess someone just thought it was some kind of “mirror” effect or “echo” or something, and I was never asked to repay it. (Not that I would have had to anyway, in the law if THEY make a mistake in my favor, not based on any deception from me, it doesn’t have to be repaid.)
Fortunately, the seller of the place I did get, allowed me to increase the monthly payments I was making, to cover the missing “down payment.”
Brilliant example of the theology of sarcasm.
Don’t count on it.
It’s been well documented that no two IRS agents get the same total when calculating someones taxes because or tax regulations are so complex and convoluted. Expecting taxpayers to be able to navigate this mess is a joke.
Ever notice that Election Day and Tax Day are about as far apart as possible. In a perfect world they’d be the same day.
Tax Day the day before Election Day. Draws a line under it.
The process is the punishment.
End withholding and make people pay their Income Tax [and payroll taxes] in cash at the polls.
It’s complications like this that make me wish for either a flat rate tax or The Fair Tax . . .
Tax Day should be the first Monday in November.
You are totally evil . . . I love it!
I fondly remember a bumper sticker:
National Health Care: the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the Postal Service, at Pentagon prices!
good thing FJB hired 80k more agents
Once I did a small job for a major media company. The bill came to a few hundred dollars. As I recall, thy were slow in paying, and I re-billed with my normal late fee. Then they paid the original amount. That’s fine, I was happy to get paid.
Some months later I got another check, again for the original amount, with a letter stating that I had not negotiated the check, and since it was now stale, here’s a new check. I voided it and returned it with a letter, assuring them that they had already paid me. A few months later I got another check, same amount, same letter. This time my return letter with the voided check now stated that I had been paid, please stop sending me money.
A few months later, you guessed it. This time, however, my return letter reaffirmed that I had already been paid, and they did not owe me anything. However, this business had now become a nuisance. Henceforth I would be billing them for the time required to deal with this matter, at my regular hourly rate.
A few months later, yep. This time I enclosed an invoice with the voided check and the letter.
A few months later I got a letter stating that they were in receipt of my invoice, but needed a reference code of some sort before they could pay it. Of course I didn’t have a reference code. They had never given me any code even with the original job. But that did put an end to the checks.
I like the story about, I think it was John Coors, who had a “pay” window at his company and then a “tax” window. The story is that’s one of the reasons withholding came about.
My case was actually rather simple, as those things go. And don’t get the idea that figuring out what is “income” would be simple.
Delaying taxes until November doesn’t seem workable. Moving Election Day to April or earlier would make more sense, but isn’t Election Day specified in the Constitution?
withholding started during WWII because the government needed the cash flow. It was Milton Friedmans idea. He said later in life it was one of his biggest regrets.
I still marvel at how many people think getting a large “refund” in April on income taxes is a good thing. They seem completely unaware that a large refund happens only because they paid too much during the year.
(I know, there are some people who recognize they do not have the fiscal discipline to save up for a large dollar purchase and therefore use over-withholding as an enforced savings program.)
Back when I was a Revenoor we were discussing the pros and cons of creating a state W-4 form to try to get state withholding closer to the state liability, as opposed to using the federal form to determine state withholding. One of the tax attorneys pointed out that the difficulty wasn’t the math, it was different taxpayer’s expectations as to what should be withheld. Then he told a story about helping a taxpayer with a complicated issue, and while they were on the phone, the attorney notices that the taxpayer had over 1/2 of his income withheld for state taxes. When the attorney offered to help him come up with a more reasonable figure, the taxpayer said no, that was the way he wanted because he wasn’t going to write that !*@$# a check. He knew that most his refund would be diverted to pay child support, so he wanted to make sure that there was enough to pay the amount owed, without him having to do it.
It would be better for the kids, though, to get the money during the year.
It’s good to hear from you, Muleskinner! And I want to say thank you. We received our state refund in less than a week of our hitting the “send” button on our return.
I keep telling everybody, from atop my soapbox, that the only recourse is to repeal the 16th Amendment. Use the original Constitutionally specified federal tax system, that is, levy taxes on the States directly (rather than on individuals directly), proportional to the number of citizens in the State. (Divide the Federal budget by the number of citizens, multiply that number by the citizens of a given state, and that gives the State federal tax amount). Each State can figure out how to raise the money (gambling royalties in Nevada, or oil royalties in Alaska, or steeply progressive income taxes in California, Massachussetts, Illinois, New York New Jersey, etc, etc., sales taxes, transaction levies [a State fee for transfer of title in a property purchase for example], property taxes, luxury taxes, or, in extreme left states, capital gains taxes on unrealized gains [sure to be popular with politicians in California and Massachussetts]). One important rule would be that no federal funds could flow back to any individual state at all, unless a proportional amount was sent to all States based on each States’ population. That would give States leverage over the federal budget. If Senators were elected by State Legislatures, that would provide an even better opportunity for States to influence the federal budget. So repeal the 17th Amendment as well. The federal government would then be the tail wagged by the dog, rather than what it is now, the tail wagging the dog of the Republic. There is no form of direct taxation by the federal government vis a vis private citizens that can curtail Leviathan. The only solution is to restore the possibility for the federal government to have its budget circumscribed by the States. The federal income tax has created a central government that is so bloated as to be completely unmanageable, as DOGE has demonstrated, a taxing power that is unlimited in any meaningful way (that is, unlimited government rather than limited government) and a centralization of power that has eviscerated the entire idea of a representative federalist Republic with limited powers.
Only then will these type of experiences with the IRS be stopped. Of course, such may occur with the States. But individuals can at least potentially vote with their feet. There would likely be many differences between the different tax jurisdictions, and competition among the States for economic growth would tend to curtail the worst offenses at the State level. As it is now, there is no where to hide. And no interstate competition. Everywhere the same oppressive federal tax regime reigns. ANd is used for social engineering and as a political weapon. THat is not freedom. THat is serfdom.
As John Lennon would say: Imagine, no federal tax return. It’s easy if you try.
I like where you are going with this.
This may dampen the enthusiasm for illegal immigration.
That’s a brilliantly weird story. Unaccountable bureaucracies create unaccountably weird processes, because they don’t have to actually go anywhere. They’re more likely to go Kafka.
The view from the Tax Commissioners was to always be improving processes. My team was given a free hand to suggest legislation that would simplify returns whenever there was a tax cut. Since term limits passed, the legislature has pretty much re-complicated everything, by trying to shift tax liability from property taxes to income taxes, or making the tax code promote some agenda other than raising revenue.
Back in the day, our people and IRS employees would hold events to help people out with their returns. It ended when the IRS started complaining that the state revenue people were too taxpayer friendly.
Yes, it would.