I was a millionaire who paid next to nothing in taxes. I used to laugh it off. But when my president began chastising millionaires for not paying more in taxes, my conscience and my patriotism forced me to regret my greedy ways.
It did not help that Warren Buffett was cheering on President Obama and the White Whine Party to oppose Tea Party millionaires who want to keep their money. The pendulum had swung.
My saga began in late November 2010, when the Social Security Administration notified me that my 2009 income was $1,967,732.00. This amount is wrong; I will explain why later. But wouldn't you know? The SSA picked the one year of my tax-paying life that I didn't make more than a million dollars to say that I did!
(Serious readers take note: The previous sentence contains a wild exaggeration.)
I thought a fool's thought. I thought it would be a simple matter to correct SSA's records.
I went to the SSA website, downloaded Form 561-U2, and filed a request for reconsideration on Dec. 9. I even attached information from my tax return to make SSA's job easier.
I did not hear a word from SSA until March 9. Then, SSA replied that the error was due to incorrect information sent to them by the Internal Revenue Service. The letter also instructed me that it was my responsibility — not the SSA's — to contact the IRS and have it correct the error.
This is government at its finest. You wait three months only to be redirected to another government agency.
My next step was to call the IRS to seek advice. After explaining the situation, I was told that the error was mine; that I had keypunched the wrong number when I e-filed my return. The blame game ended, however, when I told the agent that I only file paper returns. Therefore, if it was a keypunch error, it was an IRS keypunch error — not mine.
After considerable study, the IRS called back and advised me to file an amended return. I asked how I could file an amended return when there was nothing to amend. My return, after all, was correct.
The agent then recommended that I dump the problem on the Kansas City office. That's where I had filed my paper return, and perhaps the Kansas City office could override the IRS computer.
It was May 23 when I wrote the Kansas City IRS office. They acknowledged my letter with their standard "45-day letter", which means "Don't expect any action for 45 days."
I got another 45-day letter.
I had the feeling that I was locked in a Twilight Zone curiosity shop that sold grandfather clocks. And for the worse, the clocks chimed but once every three months.
On Sept. 7, the IRS informed me that it had corrected the error. However, the agency failed to send me a transcript that I could forward to the SSA office. To get a copy of the corrected transcript, I had to call an agent. The waiting time alone was 45 minutes, and it took as long for the agent to correct the IRS computer record.
The SSA advised me on Oct.7 that their records had been corrected. It took 10 months and probably 50 hours of my time to correct a split-second keypunch error.
At the outset, I was amazed that the IRS data input system would allow such an obvious error. A clerk had entered a line item ($19,143.00) without inserting the decimal point. Thus, my income was inflated by $1,914,300.00. Bells and whistles should have gone off when this happened.
In this age of precision scanners, why is the IRS relying on keypunch clerks? It's not like Google hired monks to keypunch all of those library books!
The SSA and IRS computers obviously talk to each other. Why couldn't the SSA initiate my request? The SSA should have forced the issue if for no other reason than to discover how junk data from IRS corrupted its database.
Between the SSA, IRS and yours truly, at least 100 man hours were spent correcting this mistake. Maybe even 200 man hours. Maybe 300 man hours.
Like the taxpayers, the IRS and SSA workers are every bit as overwhelmed. It's no wonder. What I went through this year is a case study in poor management of both data and personnel.
To President Obama (and Warren Buffett), I would offer this advice. Before you criticize taxpayers at any level, you should go to the IRS and look under the hood. The search engine that you rely on needs repaired.
