Here's what I've learned from reading your responses: if a person is a lawyer who specializes in interacting and/or commonly interacts with the FTB, then the "FTB are easy to work with"; but, if you're a "regular" person that interacts with them, there's a nontrivial opportunity for the interaction to go sideways.Not just my experience. Literally the experience of every other person I know who's had to talk to the FTB. Interestingly enough, every person who's failed to get their issue resolved with the FTB was a programmer, but the gamut of people who succesfully resolved things with the FTB on their own ranges from musicians to small-business owners and HNWI's.
Here's what I've learned from the tech bros complaining about the IRS/FTB: they've always made a mistake, but assume that because they're programmers that they're leet at the law (it's just rules right?), and refuse to admit that they messed up, so they yell at and blame the agent instead of asking for how they can get the situation resolved.
And then they tell other people ridiculous stories to cover their mistakes, like "the money doesn't get applied until you file your next return" (false, that's not how the FTB payment backend works) or "I paid income taxes to Los Angeles" (also false, since CA cities can't collect income taxes).
If they had just dropped the uber-leet tech bro act and talked to the FTB/IRS agents like their human beings doing their jobs, i.e., that they may have messed up trying to follow the rules and just wanted to get things resolved, 99.999999% of the time, the agent would have worked with them to resolve things amicably.
The fact that you appear to have no sympathy for the plight of these people is awful.
The comments I was replying to laid all the blame for clear errors on the agents rather than on themselves. Why should I feel sympathy for people who are unwilling to own up to the fact that they made an error and insist on blaming the person who is just doing their job?