IRS - Irritating Revenue Scheme

I just spent over 2 hours on hold, over 2 days, to talk to a guy for less than 5 minutes. Yes, I had to press 1 to hear the menus in English instead of Spanish. Yes, I had to enter in information to speed things up (um, wow, how much slower could they have been?) only to be asked all the same questions by the person I was connected to (50% of my 5 minute call right there).

Once we established I was who I said I was, by asking me questions anyone who has done business with me over the last few years could answer, it took all of 2 minutes for IRS employee number 125488596 to tell me, "I tried to do that, but the computer won't let me." Then IRS employee number 125488596 told me I could write a letter and ask for my penalties to be waived. When asked if I would incur further penalties and interest while writing to them and waiting for an answer, IRS employee number 125488596 didn't even have to put me on hold to answer, "Yes." How efficient. IRS employee number 125488596 didn't leave it at that though, because our government had spent gobs of money to send him to sensitivity training, so he went the extra mile and said, "It's only $212 dollars. It's not like it's a lot." This helped me feel so much better. I guess IRS employee number 125488596 makes so much that he can light his cigars with $212, but that is an amount that actually matters to me...mostly because I earned it.

Think about it this way...

In 2003 there were 5,890,821 Corp. Tax Returns filed. If 50% of them were assessed a $212 penalty, that would be $624,427,026, pocket change to the IRS. My penalty was pretty small though (and only based on 3 months), what if large companies had annual penalties of say $5000, maybe an additional 20% of those corp. filings. That would be an additional $5,890,821,000 for a total of $6,515,248,026, but come on, it's not like that is a lot! This is just penalties we are talking about here, not the actual tax burden. I kind of wonder how many paid penalties above $5000, you know, the high rollers like IRS employee number 125488596. Don't think many folks paid more? Well in 2003 38 taxpayers paid a total of $126,000 because the IRS didn't like them seeking judicial review (allowable according to The IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998). One of those 38 received a penalty of over $14,000 for daring to object and seek judicial review (the judge actually said they "should have known better").

But wait, there's more!

You know the IRS is serious about having a high level of performance for it's customers...what?...oh, you didn't realize you were a customer?...yes, while on hold for over 2 hours I heard many times how they were helping other "customers"...so anyway, they want to provide us such excellent service that they wanted to upgrade their computer systems. Now before you get excited about the budget overruns, you have to understand that they only started with $1.7 billion to get them through 2004. In fact, Paul Cofoni VP at Computer Sciences Corp. said, “[during] my 30 years of working in the technology field, I have never encountered any program of the size and complexity as the business systems modernization program at the IRS". Besides, they only went over the budget by a pesky $290,000,000, that is only 1,450,000 $200 penalties, and IRS employee number 125488596 can tell you that is all in a good days work.

It may be a good idea to refocus the IRS on finding some of the money we have already earned and given the Federal Government. The DoD reported $1.1 trillion missing in FY 2000 alone (video), I mean really, that is not exactly looking for a needle in a haystack.