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How can they legally claim an overpayment for money to someone who is dead. I am missing something?
There should be at least one attorney among our members to get a court order to put a stay on this.
You guys have obviously never done business with the IRS, they don’t follow rules, they make them. They take what they want and if you cause any trouble they will just take more.
Abolish the IRS
Amen to that.
Yes, I agree that this seems like an outrage on some order. That said, I read about this elsewhere in the past two days, and RIGHT NOW there’s a tweet rolling through this site from King Banian (sp?) that reads as follows:
“Did you know the govt ended the 10-year limit on collecting tax debts? In a farm bill? Of course not.”
Now, as I understand it, in 2008, a Democratic Congress overrode a Bush veto of a farm bill that included an amendment (mysteriously attributed to no one–which should be punishable by summary execution, but that’s a subject for another thread) that eliminates a 10-year statute of limitation on the collection of certain overpayments. Now, contrary to KB’s tweet, I think this related only to overpayments made to recipients (spouses and minors) under a Social Security benefit payable to survivors of workers. I don’t think the provision applies to “tax debts.” So be sure to understand what the feds are trying to recover. (More to come)
To continue, this is an outrage on several levels. Briefly, on a procedural level, to eliminate an existing statute of limitations on recovering these overpayments strikes me as changing the rules of the game after it has already begun. Beyond that, whatever happened to the notice and an opportunity to be heard. You have to love how one arm of the SSA is sending Ms. Grice annual benefit statements to her current address. But when another arm of the SSA intends to collect money from her, they’re sending notice to a 30-year-old address. And beyond taking the supposed overpayment from her federal income tax refund, there seems to be a suggestion in the article that some part or all of a Maryland income tax refund was reduced to pay some of the supposed overpayment.
To be clear, taxpayers should want the feds to be diligent in recovering benefit overpayments. But how about some perspective? For example, Social Security payments often continue for a time after someone dies. I have NO sympathy for survivors who complain about the feds recovering that money. The survivors are middle-age people. (more to come)
Unfortunately, how right you are.
Again, the survivors I mentioned in the situation above are taking advantage of the government’s simply not knowing about the recipient’s death. Of course, the government should have a fairly short time period after being notified of the person’s death to determine any overpayments or post-death payments.
The primary situation in the WaPo article, however, dealt with benefits paid to a surviving spouse for herself and for each of five minor kids. Those cases seem very sympathetic. If there’s an overpayment, absent fraud, the feds should have very little time to determine and recover an overpayment.
One thing I find especially objectionable is the materiality of these amounts–even the aggregate amount. The WaPo article says the SSA has found 400,000 taxpayers who collectively own $714 million on debts more than 10 years old. If there’s fraud, I say go after them hammer and tong. In the meantime, I read this past week that the IRS is shelling out $4 billion ANNUALLY in fraudulent income tax refunds. Can someone explain wasting resources on such a minor problem while we’re getting robbed blind–probably by many illegal immigrants?
In this case, you are pointing at the wrong agency. The is the SSA and some other agency that goes by some name like the Bureau of Public Finance. The IRS has to run refunds through these agencies, and these agencies or agency flags taxpayers who may owe something. The IRS can certainly be blamed for shelling out $4 billion a year in fraudulent refunds, but in this case it’s just passing refund information, as required, to other agencies who, in reality, do the flagging and garnishing. That said, the violation of the due process notions of notice and an opportunity to be hears seem egregious.
From the article: “But many other taxpayers whose refunds have been taken say they’ve been unable to contest the confiscations because of the cost, because Social Security cannot provide records detailing the original overpayment, and because the citizens, following advice from the IRS to keep financial documents for just three years, had long since trashed their own records.”
I can’t believe what I’m reading. This course of action is wrong on every level, but this, I would think, would be the fastest route to ending it: Social Security can’t produce the records detailing the original overpayment. What!?!!!!
I think the easiest solution for the people targeted under this is to change their withholding so that there is no refund to confiscate.