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Dealing with the IRS
SFGbob
Member Posts: 31,920
in Tug Tavern
Last week I got a letter from the IRS telling me that I owed them a few grand due to an error on my tax forms. They don't say specifically what the "error" is just that there is an error. So I pull my tax forms from last year and take a look at the section where the error supposedly is and there is no error.
So I call the number on the notice letter informing me of this "error" and that's where the fun begins.
I call them 3 times. Each and every time it's impossible to get through to a live individual calling the number they provided in their notice letter. Following the phone tree path they lay out for you in order to speak with someone about my specific issue leads you down a rabbit hole that eventually ends with your call being dropped after you've been put on hold for 40 mins. So I call the number they give for the "Taypayer advocates" and I get the option to have them call me back rather than me waiting on hold. And I'm thinking great, finally I'm getting somewhere. They call me back, and after a little more phone tree hell I finally speak to a real live person. They tell me the department I need to speak with in order to answer my questions and tell me they're going to transfer me. This not being my first encounter with soul killing bureaucracy and the wonders of Government efficiency I ask if they can give me the direct number to this department just in case I might get cut off during the transfer. Glady she says. So she transfers me and again there is a 40 minute hold and again my call is dropped. So I call the number she gave me. It takes me back to the very same voice mail tree I initially called despite the fact that it's a different phone number.
How the fuck do they get away with having customer service that sucks this bad?
So I call the number on the notice letter informing me of this "error" and that's where the fun begins.
I call them 3 times. Each and every time it's impossible to get through to a live individual calling the number they provided in their notice letter. Following the phone tree path they lay out for you in order to speak with someone about my specific issue leads you down a rabbit hole that eventually ends with your call being dropped after you've been put on hold for 40 mins. So I call the number they give for the "Taypayer advocates" and I get the option to have them call me back rather than me waiting on hold. And I'm thinking great, finally I'm getting somewhere. They call me back, and after a little more phone tree hell I finally speak to a real live person. They tell me the department I need to speak with in order to answer my questions and tell me they're going to transfer me. This not being my first encounter with soul killing bureaucracy and the wonders of Government efficiency I ask if they can give me the direct number to this department just in case I might get cut off during the transfer. Glady she says. So she transfers me and again there is a 40 minute hold and again my call is dropped. So I call the number she gave me. It takes me back to the very same voice mail tree I initially called despite the fact that it's a different phone number.
How the fuck do they get away with having customer service that sucks this bad?
Comments
I've been through this hell with them. Three fucking times they have failed to grasp the personal economics involved with a simple cashless exercise of a non-qualified stock option (delusions of grandeur here I guess). No, the entire amount of funds raised by selling all the underlying option shares to the market are not taxable income. I have to use a lot of that money to pay the exercise price and I never see it. Fuck. They also struggle with the idea of tax basis, a curious thing with which they should struggle. Every year, I'm also taxed at vesting of RSUs on $X, which is whatever the market price of the stock is that day multiplied by the number of vested shares. Pretty fucking simple. When I sell the vested shares at $X+Y, I don't have $X+Y taxable income. Also pretty fucking simple.
They fuck up both of these things at least half the time I have to include them in my filing. Part of the problem is with 1099 reporting and how they get the information about the transactions, but then again, who's in charge of what a 1099 is supposed to include? I forget.
It's completely absurd. Maybe all the fired journalists can go work there
how do you not know this?