Comment by jonathanyc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathanyc | Hacker News Reader

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> They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M.

I got a letter from the IRS for ~$300. I’m pretty sure the first letter was sent by some automated system of theirs with a bug, and the subsequent letters were some IRS employee trying to cover their ass.

Here’s the sequence of events.

- IRS: You misreported your gain on this one specific trade.

- Me: I checked and the trade is listed with the amounts you claim on the broker’s 1099-B that I sent to you. Here are the 1099-Bs with the transaction highlighted.

- IRS: We’ve already seen your 1099-Bs. Please prove to us the amounts sum to the aggregate.

- Me: Here is a spreadsheet showing all the transactions and the sums.

- IRS: OK OK. What about this other totally unrelated transaction then that is now being mentioned for the first time?

With every single reply, the IRS took months to respond. Each reply was literally just one sentence. They sent me periodic form letters just saying “we’re working on a reply” because apparently there’s some law saying they are required to reply within some number of days. The phone number they provided for me to call was literally just an automated system.

The unrelated transaction was for a huge amount on some stock I had not traded at all. At this point a friend referred me to a tax lawyer who told me to just pay the $300 so the IRS would stop harassing me. Paraphrasing the lawyer: “my rate is a lot higher than $300.”

This incident turned me against the IRS. I’m sorry about your relative but I have no hesitation vilifying them.

In contrast, the CA DMV once sent me a letter asking for $300 because a vehicle’s old registration hadn’t been cancelled. It was a hassle but every time I called in I got a human being, and on the last call the collections person saw the error in their database and fixed it on the spot. Frustrating but not malicious. The IRS on the other hand…

The IRS has been chronically under-funded for decades. They probably are not trying to be malicious, they are just over-worked and can't keep up. Their software system is many, many decades old and their staffing shortages are chronic.

Congress just recently decide to throw the IRS a bone and let them hire a few more people, but they are still chronically under-staffed.

Every time I manage to find a real human at the IRS, they have always been awesome to deal with. If you want to get a real human, the best way is to go to your local congress critter and have them contact the IRS for you. If more people do this, it also helps incentivizes Congress to eventually properly staff the IRS..... hopefully.

It's more than IRS, unfortunately. I'm sensing a profound shortage of skilled and unskilled labor in many sectors, while medical and IT are hungrily assimilating everyone...

I approached a major tax accountancy with a simple question. Nobody who's unlicensed will give tax advice: it's radioactive like medical advice, because bad tax advice is dangerous.

So I asked a professional a very simple question, and I got the wrong answer. A diametrically opposite, 100% wrong and COSTLY response, and 3 different pros gave the same answer insistently.

Not believing them, I asked to see it in writing, because the first lady on the phone, claiming she researched it prior, was unable to back it up with a doc or link.

When I demanded an answer from the guy in person, sitting in front of me in their storefront office, he exhibited his maximum competence as "imma google this for ya" and he flailed at a few commercial search engines, with no hope of showing me a clear answer.

I effortlessly found an IRS publication from IRS.GOV, which agreed with my other research and my father's opinion (a finance whiz) and I stormed out of the tax idiot's office, vowing never to approach another human there again.

Their software is fine and works. But if all their humans know is Google, why pay for the privilege of bad advice?

80,000 is a few staff?

It was 115,000+ in the early 90s. The US population grew by 33% while the IRS staff shrank by 30%.

Then add the additional economic activity and fraud vehicles created by the internet. It's a job I admire but do not envy.

I am sympathetic to the overall argument that IRS man hours available to "do useful stuff" is lower per capita than it used to be but I think your numbers are potentially way off.

Everything also got digitized in that time which is somewhat of a confounding factor.

We should probably be comparing IRS staffing to the fraction of the population employed in the private sector equivalent roles.

> Everything also got digitized in that time which is somewhat of a confounding factor.

The IRS being a large federal agency, it's possible that everything except the IRS got digitized...

Or, you know, the IRS "got digitized". In the 90s / 00s -- so, with humongously clunky systems built by huge consulting firms to the standards of (at least) ten years earlier.

Unfortunately, yes. @HeatrayEnjoyer said it well.

80k new jobs is barely slowing the problem down.

I was sympathetic to the argument that the IRS is overburdened with work before.

But the IRS spent a year harassing me about $300. If that’s the scale of supposed tax fraud that they’re spending staffing resources on I think their prioritization could be improved.

You're a private citizen (I assume?), so far easier to automate than the big guys. That was probably a result of them "being digitized" (see my other comment around here), so some buggy automatic system kept flagging you and the poor drones had to respond to the ticket.

Meanwhile, the real big tax fraudsters use convoluted bespoke schemes that the IRS's clunky systems can't be ayutomated to detect, so no tickets are raised about them.

I appreciate that Congress is not trying to make the IRS’s job easier. But I found it hard to square their third letter with the idea that they’re not trying to be malicious.

I actually had to contact the DMV the same number of times to get my problem resolved, but at least they didn’t make up a new justification for the discrepancy after abandoning their first attempt.

Your tip to contact my congressperson is a good one and I appreciate it. As a high schooler I interned as a legislative aide so I know that calling in does do something. But I think my faith in the IRS was too high before this happened; I never thought they’d do something like this.

If by harassing, you mean sending you letters, the software prints those. It does it for all bills under some threshold(I forget the amount now). Humans are barely involved in that process.

If you have literal IRS agents showing up wanting their $300, I'm seriously surprised. I'd recommend you verify they really are IRS agents and not scammers.

You should just pay the $300 and move on with life though. You will spend more than $300 of your time/energy trying to convince the IRS you don't owe it(assuming you feel that way).

In general the IRS is very forgiving and tolerant up to a point, but eventually you get put on their naughty list. Much like a sleeping giant, they are happy to snooze away for a decade or so most of the time, but eventually they wake up and get angry. You never want the IRS actually angry with you, it almost never works out in your favor.

No offense, but I feel kind of silly only realizing now that you’ve been responding without having read my original post. I already paid the $300, I already talked to a tax lawyer, and the letters after the first one were not automated. If they’re scammers, it’s weird that I paid them by typing irs.gov into my address bar. I wish you all the best.

I did read it originally before my 1st comment. I just didn't link this last comment with that comment. HN does a bad job(no job?) of showing that relationship, and it skipped my brain.

I'm glad you learned something though: It's not worth fighting the IRS over smaller amounts of money like this if you can afford it.

The DMV is usually properly staffed. The IRS is absolutely NOT properly staffed. That was the point of my first comment.

I’m sure there is some variance in IRS customer experience. I received similar letters from the IRS and after calling them (and waiting for a callback) the matter was always swiftly resolved.

That said, it wouldn’t hurt if their customer support division had more resources.

You’re an easy mark to hit a quota. Thats unjust.

I’m not a defender of the IRS. I’ve worked for my share of large corporate and government bureaucracy. They are dumb organizations if you design them to be. The folks who have controlled the purse at the committee level in congress want that org to be dumb.

I’ve consulted for a few DMVs. Fundamentally, they are tax agencies. They sell stickers and plates. They are unique, however, as they are one of the few state level organizations that directly interact with the entirety of the public. They often do a mediocre job, but they see themselves as customer service orgs and make effort to give you a positive experience. Most states have governance structures where individual legislators cannot micromanage agency functions as well.

Unlike tech companies, the DMV also has to serve everyone, even the high-cost citizens.

A dog once bit me, so now I dislike all dogs.

And the dog was keeping predators from plundering your livestock.

It's such an impulsive, nearsighted, and frankly child-like reaction.

I’d like to invite you to consider what the differences between dogs and human IRS employees might be. When you equate them, you are not being very charitable regarding their intelligence or moral agency.

That's not what they were doing and you know it.

Your comment history tells me you don’t use HN to have interesting conversations. Have a good day!

Even if that were true, that wouldn't change anything about what you are doing. Stop the bad faith engagement.

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