Let me tell you a little story. I have been filing income taxes since the 1970s. I have been filing income taxes for me and my wife since the late 1990s. This year, however, the IRS has suddenly decided that my wife, who is not an American, should have a social security number. She actually does and I actually provided it to them on the first tax form I filed for me and my wife but they refused to accept her ss number for reasons beyond my I can't follow how the IRS "thinks" ken. They could have automatically forwarded me a tax payer number for my wife but, no surprise here, such a logical customer service oriented conclusion seems to be beyond their zombie brain dead ken.
This year the IRS decided that I misspelled my wife's name, something that would be quite a trick given that I have been married since 1997. What really happened, and this isn't very difficult even for someone who isn't Sherlock to figure out, is that some zombie brain dead flunkey at the IRS interpreted the first "a" and the second "t" in my wife's name, Tatyana/Tatiana, as a "u" and a "d". What is so curious about this misreading is that they got that the name of my wife was Tatyana by looking at the signature box but they couldn't apply the logic that "a" and "t" can sometimes be read as "u" and "d", as anyone with half a deductive brain knows, and that the Tudyana in the box at the top was actually the Tatyana in the box at the bottom. Amazing. These are apparently the type of brain dead zombie savants that inhabit the dark dens of the IRS.
Because of the IRS's lack of deductive reasoning abilities and the inability of the IRS to do some very simple and not much time consuming research into our past IRS returns, all of which say Tatyana and all of which don't have my wife's social security or tax payer number on them, the IRS decided that they weren't going to refund my wife's portion of my return. They told me to file a corrected form if I wanted to pursue the issue.
And that is exactly what I did because I discovered I made an error in math. Maths and taxes are not and will never be my strong suit. I find both of them about as interesting as watching paint dry or watching an American sitcom. On the basis of the corrected return the IRS did refund my wife's portion of our refund. Happy ending just like in a Hollywood movie? Not so fast. With the IRS one good turn deserves two bad others.
Just yesterday I received a communique from on IRS high which said I made a $15 dollar mistake on my corrected form, horror of horrors, and that I now owed them $15 dollars plus .7 cents interest and penalties. Let it not be said that the IRS doesn't seek their pound of flesh.
I very well could have made a mistake. The this is the tax you owe cells in the 1040EZ instructions on the IRS website, which is what I used because the IRS is too cheap to send us tax forms and tax form information books as they used to, is very difficult to use for an oldie who is not a goodie and who doesn't have the greatest of eyesight. Logic would dictate that the IRS should make these here's what you owe cells more computer viewer friendly but this being the IRS I suspect that rather obvious conclusion hasn't even crossed their zombified minds. And let's not forget that the American government and its corporate owned politicians want us to use private tax services.
I am not going to voluntarily pay the interest and penalties the IRS claims I owe it because I haven't deposited or cashed the second refund cheque they sent me and my wife so technically they still have the $15 dollars they claim I owe them in their bank account, one of the big banks, I suspect, that screwed you and I out of billions of our tax dollars. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if an organsisation as skanky and as illogical as the IRS--don't they charge interest on interest?--doesn't see it this way. After all they were too brain dead to figure out that "u" was really "a" and that "d" was really "t". I give you the night and day of the living IRS brain dead. I can't keep it from them anyway because even if I am right they have the power to take it anyway from my next years refund assuming I have one next tax season. And that would be, to paraphrase Faith from Buffy, tyranny.
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