If any of you have had the bad fortune to need information from the IRS, over the last few years, then you know all about my topic, in here. The IRS has always been lacking in quality agents, at its lower levels. Thing is, now, due to many different factors, the IRS is horribly short-staffed, so it takes any and all applicants that drop by. Austin recently had a call to hire 800 new agents. 300 showed up to apply. All were hired, as far as I've heard. I'm sure those new hires will be the best and the brightest, right? Go ahead and call any of the 8XX IRS numbers that are listed. You will NEVER get through. I was routed all over the place, only to be told, at my last stop, that nobody could help me. Then I was hung up on. Another hour wasted, times six! Why don't they put a recording right at the top of their asinine phone menu that states: "We're sorry. The IRS does not have enough agents to staff our phone lines. Please hang up, write us a letter and, maybe, you'll hear back from us in the next two years. Thank you. Goodbye." Let's go further, here: I had to call the IRS, over the last two days, because I got a notice telling me they still had my second economic stimulus check for $600. They wanted me to call, so the check could be reissued and mailed to me. Hmmm..... Curious, indeed. I decided to dig around. So, I went online and got a new IRS account. Y'all be warned: You have to set yourself up to be scanned, ID'd physically, and consent to give up any and all rights to your privacy, in order to view the "heavy documents" the IRS has on you. Maybe it was worth it, for me: I found that my check was issued 1/10/21. It came back to the IRS on 1/25/21. Then, and here's a nice bit of absurdity, the IRS waited a year to see if I'd cash it. WHAT????? How the hell could I cash it, geniuses, when you already got it back? When they were sure I wasn't going to cash it, LOL, they canceled it, on 1/25/22, and then waited another two months to let me know that I have a check due me, from them! Oh but I need to call them, first! IMPOSSIBLE! Well, I'm not totally crazy, although some might debate that. I was hit by a bolt out of the blue: Y'all have my money, I can't get through to you to get it, but wait..........I haven't filed my return yet, and I NEVER file until 4/15. I now have your butts over the barrel! I researched the topic of what to do on your return, if you have never received a stimulus check. Yay! There's a line for that! Yay, again!. So, I took the Certified Letter I was going to send, today, along with all of my new documentation, and put it all in a new folder. No more frustrating, unanswered phone calls to the IRS. Yay! I hold the cards now!!!! The line, with the credit for the amount due me, has been filled in on my return, the credit is mine, and that's that! How sweet it is!!!!! If any of you have similar tales of frustration, and then triumph, go ahead, let's hear 'em........
Some whistle-blowers/ informers have published that the income tax that is collected was supposed to be only for residences / citizens living in the District of Columbia, or other criteria that was not meant to be a burden on most citizens of the usa. Someone figured out that they could claim more people had to pay income tax, and made up reasons not constitutional why they needed to pay , and have illegally thus collected and tortured millions of citizens contrary to what the constitution states. It is not really too complicated for those who have taken time - months or years - to learn the system, who have enough insight and knowledge of the legal shenanigans to know what the so-called authorities are getting away with .... it is a maze, a horrendous maze, a seemingly too difficult obstacle/ task to deal with it, so the million-aires up pay someone to deal with it for them and often get away with paying no tax, legally, in line with the constitution.
Hmm...... It seems from the lack of replies that the IRS must be doing a great job for everyone else, in here, OR most folks in here no longer have to file returns like those who still work do. OK, then, sorry I posted this.....
A lot ofusha e been out of workforce for a while but Dr ontinue I still file because I do have income
We never really had trouble with the IRS, other than my wife filing wrong and us getting a refund instead of paying them. She does our taxes online each year. Kind of funny, because her career/college degrees are in Accounting and Finance. Even when a person is retired, IRS filing is done on SS. Don't know about a Pension, don't get one.
I don't understand why you seem to get upset if you don't get a huge response to a thread...? This is actually a pretty small forum and I imagine that most people don't have problems with the IRS. Sorry you had a problem; sounds like it was frustrating to deal with.
The IRS is totally overwhelmed. Between the vax mandates initially (that I think were later dropped) and all the stimulus packages dropped on the IRS to administer and tracked with reduced personnel, the agency (of which I am not a fan) just cannot keep up. Wife, who is a licensed tax person, says the IRS has not completely finished the 2019 returns. Of course, all the overwork probably means fewer audits, but if there are any questions about your return or refund, it may be almost impossible to get answers.
I used to do taxes for folks. I once worked full time for Block when I got laid off from my real job, then part time for a couple of years, and I had maybe 6 regular clients of my own for the longest time. The vast majority of audits come out in favor of the taxpayer because many people do not want to take every legitimate deduction because it sounds like "loophole." Then when they get that "audit letter" (really it's just a request for info by mail, not an in-person grilling), out of paranoia they pull out every scrap of paper they have for that tax year, you then file an amended return with ALL of the deductions, they get more money (with interest), and the audit goes away. My mother owned a rental house, and she got an IRS letter one year requesting proof that she owned the rental property she was voluntarily declaring taxable income on! Perhaps they thought it was some low-level money laundering scheme. Who knows why the computers pick on some of these situations? I was lucky in that if I had any questions or issues, there was a central IRS office about 10 miles from home, so I would just drive over. That was before Timothy McVeigh. I had one Block client who was from Kenya. He had rental property over there, rental property here in the states, and a U.S. home he owned and lived in. His U.S. home burned down and he moved into the U.S. rental property in mid-tax year, so he had incomes and catastrophe losses and moving expenses and a bunch of weird foreign stuff. His stories kept changing. I kicked him out twice to go home, figure out which version of his story he wanted to tell me, and then come back and not keep changing it in my presence. That was in the early 80s and I still remember his name. Bottom line: My problem in all of this is with Congress, not with the tiny little cogs in the Federal machine. As most of us know, when you call the IRS for advice, their disclaimer is always "Take this advice at your own risk. We are not responsible for what we tell you. Rely on our advice at your own risk. The laws are so screwed up even the agency responsible for administering them don't understand them." So call your Congress critter. Then wait for their response (if you even get one): Constituent Form Letter #384B. Side story: I took tax classes at community college. My instructor at the time had been an IRS Section Chief with over a decade of experience. He was a five foot nuthin' pasty little guy with shocking white hair and Coke bottle glasses...you could imagine him in a dank basement hunched over a desk wearing a visor under a dangling bare incandescent bulb, oblivious to the sound of water slowly drip-drip-dripping in the background and the occasional squeak of rats fighting over the last fragment of a dropped potato chip. He would give classes by citing the Code and then discussing it. We would follow along in our CCH textbooks that we thought the guy was reading from. Nope. He was reciting the Code from memory, letter perfect, no book in hand, pacing back & forth in front of the class as he spoke. So...what are you gonna spend your check on?
The gov't knows what you made and what you owe. Some people make a small amount outside of what is gleaned already by the gov't that they want, so, they want to do away with cash and other currency. The struggle of doing one's taxes is merely a control of the populace. I day-traded my daughter's account and did not do very well, basically breaking even, once. But the sales sent up red flags and they wanted tax on $64,000 or something like that. I responded for her as to what was done. But it was all included with the schedule D already. I think they claim against lower income people who will freak out at an IRS letter and maybe pay what they ask for. They thanked my for my 'clarification' when I repeated what I had sent in the first time. I have a state sponsored 'Part D' medicare program and they make me report all my income. Then they correct it and send the info back to me--so they know too. I sweat at having to fill this stuff out every time. I want to write a letter to them every year saying "You already know what I make! Do I qualify or not?! But I stay respectful and send my usual screwed up report.
The IRS goes after lower income people because those "of means" don't handle this stuff themselves any more than they personally write checks for their monthly bills or get their own mail...their advisors do all this for them. This stuff does not cause angst to the wealthy because it's often not even on their radar screens...it just "gets fixed" without them even being aware it existed in the first place. The rich also have the resources to surmount a defense against the IRS, and the amounts involved often justify engaging in such a costly battle...and private accountants know a lot more about the tax code than the government employees do. Ofttimes the rich are politically connected, meaning they can put an end to the problem for the cost of a phone call as just one benefit from the investment of a campaign contribution. So the IRS goes after you & me. I do not fault those who have garnered wealth. We are all supposed to be treated equally under our form of government. It is not the fault of the well-to-do that our government is for sale and you & I can't afford the price.
I remember Warren Buffet making the big statement that his secretary paid taxes at a higher rate than he did (probably due to capital gains rates) all the while fighting a protracted battle to avoid paying a multi-million tax bill himself. There was a homesteader here who filed a 1040 when he didn't even need to file. The IRS decided he was lying, as nobody could live on a $5000 annual income, so they called him to report to Anchorage so they could review his records. He simply said "No, you can come here to review my records" in his mailed response. To reach his place on the river, the auditor would have to fly from Anchorage to Bethel, board a small plane to Red Devil, then find a small boat to take him/her to the homestead site. Needless to say, the audit never took place and no further action was taken.
It amazes me that people will stand up in public and state "I will not do what I believe to be "the right thing" until I get the government to force everyone to do it." Those are situational ethics that never saw a scenario they liked, but self-righteously claim to still be seeking. Regarding that homesteader, I have one tax story that still breaks my heart. A couple walked into the office to get their taxes done, and put a bunch of W-2s on my desk. The two of them worked several jobs as cleaners in office buildings for a bunch of different businesses. As you know, the first several thousands of dollars of income are exempt from income tax, at which point withholding and the Requirement To File kick in. The problem was that each one of those myriad employers rightly did not start withholding taxes until the threshold was crossed. So these people who were doing the right thing and working their butts off had unwithheld base income they owed taxes on...times a bunch of employers. To (literally) compound the issue, each incremental dollar was taxed at a marginally higher rate. The amount they owed the Fed and the state was as a small fortune to them. They qualified for an exception to the penalty for under-withholding (lucky them), but they had to pay for that form to be done. I hated my job that day.
One year, I had four different employers at the same time (City of Los Fresnos, State of Texas, Texas Southmost College, and South Padre EMS), and I owed a crapload of taxes at the end of the year. Besides that, I did okay though, because I was getting paid by three different entities for the same job, and the EMS company was on the side.
Between this, and the special-interest "loopholes," and the social engineering, and non-tax paying voters, and a bunch of other stuff, the case for a Flat Tax pretty much makes itself.
When I take the time to start a thread, I do so because I believe people will find it interesting, and they will share experiences that may tie into my own. I'm happier, now, because a number of people have contributed, in here, and I found their posts interesting and informative.