The IRS - Making a Check and Listing It Twice

[MineralMan]

A mystery check showed up in today's mail, from the United States Treasury. I will skip saying what the amount was. My wife showed it to me and said, "What is this about?" I looked at the check and the amount it was for and said, "I have no idea, but let me think about it."

A few minutes later, I had solved the mystery:

As is our wont, we had filed an extension on filing our 2018 taxes. We almost obsessively procrastinate. In October, I finally got around to doing our taxes, using TurboTax, about which I won't say mean things, although I could.

Anyhow, when all was calculated, we owed some money to the IRS. Ever the honest taxpayers that we are, I E-filed the tax return and electronically paid the amount owed, letting TurboTax handle the payment, which went through just fine and was taken from our checking account, faster than the time needed for light to travel six feet.

Then, in November, we got a nice threatening letter from the IRS saying that we had underpaid our taxes and that we must pay up at once or face dire consequences sometime in the future. Again, ever the honest taxpayer, I wrote a check for the amount of money the IRS demanded, paying little attention to the exact amount, since there were numbers, etc. on the threatening letter that showed how much we owed. I mailed the check the same day. In my haste, though, I forgot to check that amount against any other numbers associated with that tax return. The funds were gone from our checking account forthwith, proving that the USPS delivers quickly to the IRS.

The upshot is that the IRS somehow did not notice that we had electronically paid the amount owed when we filed our 1040. Apparently, there is not good communication between the IRS and the United States Treasury, which was the recipient of our electronic payment. Someone or some algorithm at the IRS had billed us again for the amount we had paid electronically when we E-filed our tax forms.

In its thorough and exacting way, the IRS noticed our double payment and a check was cut to refund us the amount we had paid twice. That's not a very efficient way of doing things, but we got our money back.

As I thought more about this, it occurred to me that, had I noticed that the amount demanded in that earlier letter was the same as the amount we had paid electronically, I might have written back to the IRS explaining the situation. I have done that in the past, when a mistake was made by the IRS. It is not a good idea, since there are apparently no human beings with full use of their brains employed at the IRS. Rather than clearing up a discrepancy, such letters of explanation lead to more letters of demand from the IRS, but not to a positive outcome in any reasonable amount of time.

So, perhaps I did the right thing, unwittingly, by paying the amount owed when we initially filed the 1040 twice. Rather than involve a human being, the problem was corrected automatically by the algorithms that connect the IRS to the United States Treasury and that reconcile discrepancies.

I will, however, offer a bit of advice, based on a very difficult time in a previous year in correcting an error made by the IRS: If you send a check to the IRS, either with your tax forms or following a demand for additional payment of some amount, do not EVER forget to write the Social Security number of the first person's name listed on the tax form or the demand on the memo line of the check, along with the year and form or voucher number. If you fail to write those numbers on your check, the check will be cashed, and it will take you at least a year, or perhaps several, to convince the IRS that you, indeed, paid that amount. Trust me. It is always better not to deal with the human beings at the IRS. They are not the best and brightest of federal employees.

Now, if you read this entire post, you are truly a dedicated and patient DUer. I thank you for your diligence.