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Comment by jonathanyc | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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