IRS Refund Story

Every year I try to do my taxes early. I get Turbo Tax (it’s the 15th year I’ve been using TT) and do it myself. I also use Quicken and I am anal about my finances so it’s easy to import from one application to the other so it’s fairly easy to do my taxes.

This year was no different. I collected all my 1099’s, W-2’s, 1099 INT’s, contribution letters, Schedule C material, etc. and prepared to attack the filing. If I find I owe, I will hold off submitting until April. If I find I get a refund, then I file right away. We adjust our withholding annually to get within $500 one way or another.

I finished my taxes on February 8th and saw that we were set to receive a refund of about $400 from the Federal Government. I filed the tax return off electronically and received the refund about 8 days later, directly deposited into my account. About the same time, I received a straggling 1099 MISC form from one of my consulting jobs. This resulted in a higher income which meant I had to pay more, necessitating an amended return. As I was going through the return, I noticed that I also made a mistake in one of my capital gains worksheets. I put down a cost basis for 100 shares rather than 200 shares. this reduced the net profit from the sale of stock so it increased the refund. The net result of the late 1099 and the mistake in the cost basis was an additional $500 due us. I filed the amended return in late February and knew that I was in for a long wait as it takes a while to process these since they must be done manually.

Finally, this week, I received the telltale envelope with the check inside. I threw it aside with the intention of opening up the envelope upon my return home from Elena’s T-Ball practice. Upon return, this is what I found:

A slight overage on the refund there, guys. I called the IRS the following day and they told me to wait for a letter which will explain everything. When I got the letter, it said (in so many words) that the check was because of the adjustments I had made on the amended return. Riiiight. Obviously someone made a data entry mistake.

The check currently resides in our safety deposit box and will remain there until we straighten this out with the IRS. It will NEVER, EVER be cashed, simply because it’s not our money and I don’t want to spend any time in an 8 x 8 cell with Bubba