Ode to the IRS...

It's not often I write something here twice in one day but while this is on my mind I thought I'd better get it off. In February, I went to HR Block to have my taxes done. It's probably something I could do on my own but there's an IRA and a 403B involved and, frankly, who needs the headache. So, to good ol' HR Block. Now I had intended to file as Married, Filing Separately since Alex had only been in the US since Nov of '09 but the kind woman at HR Block convinced me that he would qualify for a Individual Tax Identification Number (since he does not yet have a Soc Sec number). She seemed to know what she was doing and she lured me with a promised return of almost twice what I would normally get.

Fast forward to the present. Still no tax refund in the mail. About a week ago, we get a letter from the IRS in Austen, TX stating we have to send them more documentation before they can process the ITIN application. The IRS cannot process our tax forms until they get the approved ITIN number. So...we send them the documentation they need and we wait.

A few days later we get another letter from Austen, TX stating they cannot process our most recent application (mind you, there was only one application) because we already have a pending application in Austen. Clearly, that is the one and only application so I have no idea what the heck they're talking about. Yesterday, we get a letter from the state of Wisconsin stating that they cannot process our state tax form because you cannot file Married, Filing Jointly if one spouse is a non-resident alien (which Alex is because we haven't gotten his Green Card yet).

So...
Off we go, back to HR Block to try to make some sense of this. Of course, the branch I first went to is closed. It was only open for tax time so now we're dealing with a whole new person. She had to read and re-read the letters over and over again. For the ones from Austen, her sage advice was just to wait a week more and then to call them directly. No duh! Then she started typing a lot and looking a lot of things up in some very weighty books and mumbling to herself and trying to recalculate my state form. The state says I now OWE them $68 instead of getting $224 back. Her calculations showed I OWED them $354. Finally, I told her we would just pay the friggan' $68 and call it a day. THEN...she had us sign a statement saying we received "Audit services" from HR Block. What the frig??? We got nothing...nothing we couldn't have done on our own. Thankfully she did not ask us to pay her anything more because I would probably have punched her. Hard.

You see, in Sweden, they can pay their taxes with one simple text message from their cell phones. No kidding. It's that easy. I can't wait to move there.

Happy Tax Time Everyone! I'll let you know if, and when, we ever get our money!