Story of the Day 12/ 03/ 2011

The stars are misaligned.

I have been saying that line to various people for over a week, now, although, the start of this episode stretches back before that.
When I say this, about the stars, I get odd looks from most people.
But not from all.
One woman corrected me, "the planets are out of line." Apparently a specific planet.
Regardless, I am blaming the stars and the planets for the series of upsets I am currently living through.

One of these is the IRS.
I explained to a student of mine who is in high school and too young to really understand what I meat, " The IRS induces this feeling of nausea in even honest people. I have done nothing wrong ,and I am sweating thinking about dealing with them. Just ask your parents!"

Last spring, we received a notice from the IRS.
All right, it wasn't really last spring, it was late winter which may be more thematically appropriate.
We were in arrears.
We had somehow managed to not declare a bit over $9,000 of income for medical services.
Initially, we assumed it was just another W2 error.

My husband has worked for the same business for 18 years.
In those 18 years, there have been a few occasions when the business has filed a W2 that was inaccurate. So far, they have always let us know fairly promptly. But one, year, they did not let us know until after we had actually finished filing our tax return, and I had to refile it with the corrected W2.
So, I initially thought this was the problem. But from 2009? That didn't make sense.
Then, after reading the hefty batch of papers the IRS had sent us, I realized that the error was in my not reporting a bit over $9,000 I had earned from my job with First Steps.
First Steps is the agency I subcontracted with
for a few years. But I did not subcontract with them during 209, and received absolutely no money from them, that year.
Medical payment? I worked doing parent education for families with children with disabilities. I did this for children who were too young to attend school- babies. My medical equipment consisted of a lot of toys and doing a developmental evaluation on most of the kids every 3 months.
And I quit the job ( although I loved the families and the babies) because I hated working for the State. The State was absolutely inhumane in the way it treated some of the families, and I would write and call and email to try to help a family and get nowhere because no one in the First Steps’ administration would accept any responsibility.

The straw that broke my back - and caused me to quit was the fact that worker in another county managed to not file a form and a baby was cut from services- no physical therapy, no occupational therapy, no speech therapy, nothing for many ,many months. this was a baby who had been born crack addicted and had all sorts of needs that were only going to worsen without any intervention, but no one would accept responsibility to file that dad-blasted form, and I wasn't authorized to do it.
I spent 7 months driving out to visit with the family every week as an unpaid, unauthorized provider. I did this because I couldn't live with them having no access to help from our agency. I did this knowing I would never be paid, and that my skills were far too limited to provide the level of help they needed, but it was all I could do. Well, that and make regular calls and send letters and emails to people who should have done something to help.
My resignation from the agency was because of that child and how she was mistreated.

So, now I have a statement from the IRS that I have been paid money that I wasn't paid during a year I did not work for the agency.

I waited until a weekday morning, and I called the agency. I explained the situation to the young woman on the other end of the telephone. She checked her records and stated that they had paid me two checks in 2009. One in November and one in December, each for a little more than $4.500. I told her that they had most certainly not paid me ( and , in fact, I had never received a monthly payment for such a high amount from them ) . She insisted that they had. She also insisted that I had been sent a W2 form for that money. Another thing I had not received.

So, I did what I always do in such an odd situation, I emailed our friendly neighborhood lawyer for help.
Not everyone has such a fallback guy, especially not one like ours. He is intelligent and nice. Heck , he is even a dapper dresser. If he were single, we would have to fix him up with relative, but he is happily married.

I also knew to call him because I had called him for help the last time I had to deal with this same agency.
That was a couple of years ago, when they were in arrears in terms of paying me. Several thousands of dollars in arrears that were a result of a huge number of really stupid people who kept saying it was the computer. But since it takes people to run computers and computers only work as well as the people running them.....
After 18 months of stress, Bill was able to get the missing money from their pocket into my pocket.
It only cost him about 200 hours of stress and a lot of antacids, but he did it!
This, of course, was after the more than 12 months and 600 hours of stress and prescription antacids I had suffered in trying to get paid before I contacted him, so you can see that he is incredibly more efficient than I am.

I emailed Bill and explained the problem, and he asked me some intelligent questions and told me to drop off the papers.
Then he wrote a truly brilliant letter and we sat back and waited for First Steps to respond.
And waited.
And waited.
And I think, in the end, he did something like contact the attorney general's office and was assured that the agency would correct the information that the IRS had, because, lo and behold, they had not paid me anything during 2009. So I was not imagining it.
What relief.

Then, 8 months later, in late October, I receive another huge packet in the mail, from the IRS, stating that the interest and fees are now accumulating, that I am still in disregard of their notice to pay them, and , of course, no corrected W2 indformation was sent to them.

So, I again emailed Bill.
Who sent a letter off to First Steps.

And did not get response.

And he sent another letter off, about a month after the first.
In the meanwhile, as the calendar days get ripped from the desk calendar, I start sweating a bit, since I have about a month and a half left to file for a hearing to contest the delinquent taxes and fines on money I was never paid.


There are a couple of punch lines to this.

The first one, which is totally accurate, is that, in synagogue today, I turned around in my seat and told the lady sitting behind me that when I grow up, I want to be Bill.
She gave me a raised eyebrow look ( she actually does that quite well.) And I explained that he is both intelligent and nice. She didn't' fully appreciate the comment because she hasn't read the letters that he sent to First Steps.
If I was the lady at First Steps who was receiving them, I would be peeing my pants.
And he really is nice.
If you have ever watched the movie Harvey, you will be familiar with one of James Stewart's lines, late in the film, "Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say: 'In this world, Elwood,' she always used to call me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you can quote me." - Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart)

But Bill has managed to be both.

The second punch line, is that I actually suspect that I have been victim of identity theft.
In order for a bill to be paid to me by First Steps, they would have to receive an invoice with three numbers for approval. The two numbers would by my provider number and my agency ID number ( neither of which are my social security number) and the number of a service coordinator approving the service. Then, if they made a payment, I should have received the checks, and the W2 form would have been sent at the start of the next year and I should have received that.
I received no checks and no W2 form for that year.
The checks were cashed ( I was told that when I insisted they had paid me nothing that year). And this was during year I did no work for them. If it had been an excess payment during year I worked for the, I would have received the W2 form and immediately contacted them about the error. If I did not work for them, and they sent W2 form, I would know something was wrong. So this implies that someone had access to the numbers, both of mine and that of a device coordinator, and also changed my address, so no W2 form was not mailed here to give away the deception.

Or it could just have been a mistake. But if it was a mistake, why were two checks made out to me, but , obviously, given to someone else, cashed and ....?

And if they, after Bill's initial contacts with them, agreed to correct it but then didn't......

At any rate, I have the guy in the white hat on my side, so I am feeling a bit stressed, but only a bit.