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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.
Discussion (27)
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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."
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Brilliant example of the theology of sarcasm.
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Don’t count on it.
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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.
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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.
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