Dear Internal Revenue Service (aka "The Man"),
For many years now I have been electronically filing my taxes via the Internet, in fact I believe I've been doing it since this option was first made available, even though it typically costs me some money. It saves me time, you money and a whole bunch of trees every year - that's a win-win-win right? Yes, a win, win, win - that's as American as apple pie!
However in April 2005 you decided to block my electronic filing - you had instantaneously determined that my tax return contained an error, apparently someone had already claimed on of my dependents as their dependent. Because of this I had to print a big stack of paper and run to the post office (I agree that's my fault for procrastinating).
Fast forward to July 2006 when I receive a fat envelope from the IRS. That's someone no one wants to see, and even though I've never had one before I knew it was bad news. Imagine my surprise, and mostly shock, that you said I made an error by not reporting sale of a stock and you wanted me to pay you over $15,000 including over $2,3000 in penalties and $1,200 in interest payments for the 15 month period since my taxes were filed.
How is it that when I come to file my taxes you can instantaneously check my return for accuracy, yet it takes 15 months to tell me something that could ultimately net you a windfall of $3,500 in interest and penalties???
Guess what, you included a handy list of Frequently Answered Questions - gosh, you guys are really with it, maybe next year you'll just put "FAQ" then I'll know that you truly are a hip and trendy Internets friendly organization. And guess what the number one questions is "Why did it take IRS so long to contact me?". Hmmm... Well you claim "Tax years generally end of December 31, be we may not receive complete information from employers, banks, businesses, and other payers until much later".
I say "Hooey!"
It turns out all the institutions involved in your dispute had filed their information on time and well before I even filed my taxes. There was no late filing of information by institutions and you could easily have checked my return at the time of filing or before you paid me my 2004 refund (which you did).
I say you guys deliberately let this one slide for an extra year so you could pick up another $1,200 in interest in a year when tax receipts are down yet again from Bush's projections. I'll be willing to bet that it was IRS mandated policy to be as tardy as you damn well please with this kind of notice and its been sitting in a computer file for at least 12 months. In fact I'll wager you had flagged my file back when you first wrote me my 2004 tax refund. Nothing like giving a guy a refund to make him feel like everything is copasetic with "the man", then sticking it to him a year later with a $15,000 demand.
Understand this, I'm not a survivalist libertarian who hates government - I had until this time been pretty cool about paying my taxes, in 12 years I'd only once filed late, and have never had an error against me. I even cough up for nice software and e-filling to make it easier for you to process my returns. Paying taxes is paying the man, and "The man" is myself I told myself ergo paying taxes is good (thanks Josh Kornbluth for teaching me this).
So dear IRS - next time you even suspect there may be a huge error in my tax return, just tell me ASAP okay? I don't care if you're waiting on some institution for information to positively confirm this - just call me okay? You have my number, you know where I live, heck you even know who I work for so its not a problem. If someone is late filing their institutional information let me go kick their butts and make sure they send it to you. After all, anyone who is 15 months late filing their information is someone I don't want to do business with anyway.
I suspect this year you have sent similar demands to thousands, if not millions of American tax payers. I expect not all were as fortunate as me to discover this time the IRS had made an error, consequently you are now sitting on a very substantial pile of interest payments because you just took your own sweet time to let them know. I expect the person who decided to add a few months here and there (maybe years - who knows how long you guys stretch it out - you might have socked this one to me on my death bed for all I know!) will get a big fat raise and maybe a promotion from his boss this year.
Let me remind you of one thing - you guys are the man but you also work for the man and guess who "the man" is? Yeah, that's right - its us, you work for us. So just be careful because sooner or later enough of us are going to notice this late payment interest penalty boondoggle and do something about it. It may take us years and years because sometimes institutions do not provide complete information "until much later". Yeah, you know how those freedom of information act filings can take forever to get fulfilled - sometimes a whole presidential term comes and goes... But when they do you, and we find there was a systematic policy of sending demands as late as possible, well, lets just say at the very least you guys may be getting a very large demand for return of late payment interest and oh yes, interest on that interest!
Yours faithfully,
A tax payer (aka "A man")
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