Regarding www.reuters.com/world/us/us-... : I mentioned this on Twitter a while back, but it is worth describing here, too. In 2022, I got a notice from the IRS saying that we owed ~$76K in taxes, plus penalties, from 2021. I thought it was a scam at first. It was a real letter, though. - ThreadSky

ladonnapietra.bsky.social • 16 days ago

Regarding https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-irs-expected-fire-6700-employees-thursday-trump-downsizing-spree-2025-02-20/ : I mentioned this on Twitter a while back, but it is worth describing here, too. In 2022, I got a notice from the IRS saying that we owed ~$76K in taxes, plus penalties, from 2021. I thought it was a scam at first. It was a real letter, though.

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ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

One thing I noticed right away: the amount we supposedly owed was the exact amount of our 2021 withholdings. (It was so high because of a retention package that was mostly stock in my ex's company.) I was very confused. That amount was on our W-2s and listed on our return; why did we owe it?

ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

14 hours of sitting on hold with various IRS offices, none of whom had any live human beings, and I had an answer: turns out all taxpayers who get W-2s have taxpayer accounts that include their annual withholding amounts; that's how your withholding actually gets applied to your return. Ours wasn't.

ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

Some overworked IRS employee hadn't clicked the buttons applying our 2021 withholding amounts to our return, and the system had automatically generated a penalty letter, which nobody had bothered to check, because the staffing levels didn't allow for it. I finally got a real person to review it.

ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

"Oh, I see what happened!" she said brightly, and clicked a couple of buttons. "There you go; all set." And a few days later, I got a letter in the mail saying that all penalties were waived and everything was fine. 14 hours. On hold. To fix a $76K error that wasn't even really an error.

ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

And that was with IRS staffing levels at the 2021 level. What do you think they'll be after this? You already can't make an appointment at a local IRS office to meet with a live person; I know, because I tried that.

ladonnapietra.bsky.social•16 days ago

I've seen a bunch of people hoping that maybe they won't have to file taxes this year because the IRS won't exist in April, and trust me, you want the IRS to exist, because your tax obligations won't go away. You'll just get crazy letters in the mail about problems you have no way to fix.

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