Jim has spent 5 years battling the IRS over $8,000 the company is holding out of a refund.
Over the summer season, he lastly sought assist from the company’s Taxpayer Advocate Service, a form of public defender for people who find themselves battling the bureaucratic nightmare of the IRS. He was assigned an advocate to go to bat for him.
Solely now the advocate isn’t responding, and neither is the IRS.
It seems that after a taxpayer will get an advocate, the IRS says it’s not allowed to speak on to the taxpayer. So Jim, a pseudonym The Washington Occasions granted the taxpayer, is caught.
“Being assigned a Taxpayer Advocate is definitely working in opposition to me as a taxpayer,” Jim, who works in banking, stated in a letter to Erin Collins, the congressionally appointed Nationwide Taxpayer Advocate.
It’s a weird lure — and one which different taxpayers have fallen into, in keeping with Pete Sepp, president of the Nationwide Taxpayers Union.
“I’ve heard from quite a lot of of us who’ve had delays,” Mr. Sepp advised The Occasions.
He stated it’s probably a problem of sources: Too few individuals dealing with too many duties, leaving taxpayers caught within the cracks.
“They’re overworked, and it’s very troublesome to conduct enterprise with the IRS within the first place over even a minor merchandise in your tax return,” Mr. Sepp stated.
It’s significantly worrisome at a time when the IRS is about to begin probing extra deeply into Individuals’ funds.
Congress final yr accredited roughly $80 billion in new cash for the IRS over the following decade, however left the choices about the best way to spend it as much as the company. The one requirement was that the IRS discover a method to wring extra money out of taxpayers, closing what’s often called the “tax hole” between what the federal government believes it’s owed and what individuals are truly paying.
The IRS is already shifting to deliver on new income brokers and officers to scour filings and attempt to accumulate unpaid taxes.
Mr. Sepp stated Jim’s expertise is emblematic of the necessity to additionally workers up in help areas just like the Taxpayer Advocate Service and the Unbiased Workplace of Appeals, each of that are supposed to have the ability to assist Individuals cope with the tax company.
Lindsey Pope, a spokesperson for the Workplace of the Nationwide Taxpayer Advocate, stated they couldn’t touch upon particular instances however acknowledged errors do occur.
“We do our highest at TAS to assist taxpayers resolve their account issues with the IRS as rapidly and comprehensively as attainable, however in the middle of dealing with greater than 250,000 instances a yr, typically we aren’t as thorough as we intention to be,” the spokesperson stated.
Jim stated that also leaves him, and taxpayers like him, within the lurch.
“The TAS, noble because it’s mission could also be, is inadvertently doing hurt to the taxpayer in instances like this. I’m certain I’m not the one one dealing with this situation and I hope the TAS and IRS can take away this administrative roadblock,” he stated. ”Even when the TAS can’t present assist, it ought to no less than do no hurt.”
In Jim’s case, he utilized for an advocate in July then by no means heard again.
It wasn’t till September, when he tried to contact the IRS once more, that he was advised he’d been assigned an advocate again on the finish of July.
And the IRS stated as a result of he had now an advocate, the company may not converse with hm straight.
In the meantime, telephone calls and mail to his advocate haven’t gotten any response.
“When the IRS knowledgeable me that I may not contact them straight on this situation, it felt like a ‘gotcha’ second, the place the IRS was utilizing TAS as a defend to conveniently keep away from working with the taxpayer any additional,” he advised The Occasions.
