A Taxing Affair

I live in Florida, work in Florida, earn money in Florida and pay taxes from Florida. There is no real reason why I should pay taxes to Washington DC, but my company erroneously deducted them from my pay check throughout 2008 and I was unable to prevent it. No matter. Reclaiming the money should be no problem, I think and besides – getting a check for almost six thousand dollars when I get back from vacation will be nice. Essential, actually.

So, I file an appropriate tax return and leave.

Five months later, after retrieving my mail from the address to which it was forwarded, there is no check. Instead, I find my tax return, sent back with a slip requiring additional information and requesting that the whole form be returned in their envelope.

I do.

Still, no refund check arrives. Nor does anything else. On their correspondence, I find a customer help line number….

I take lunchtime from work, set up on a picnic table outside and call. After a voice menu system requiring me to mimic an American accent wears me out simply by its very existence, I get connected to a human.

The voice on the phone cannot tell me anything about itself except her gender title and second name – let’s call her Miss A. I don’t want a personal history involving family size, tastes in music or details of her early sex life, but some identification more substantial than the semi-anonymous school teacher moniker would be nice.

Miss A listens patiently as I – under the false impression that my own patience will be rewarded – relate the tale of what has happened to date. It is not much but I limit it to the basic facts so as to not cause confusion. Miss A does not strike me as the Brain of America, 2009.

Omitting unnecessary information and including only what is relevant is a skill at which I am expert after many years of dealing with The System and its army of supporters. Some people would include everything imaginable and take so long that the listener’s ears would close up and their eyes crumble to dust.

It is not necessary, for example, to tell Miss A that I rode my bicycle more than five thousand miles across America, that I took four months from work to do so, that I had anticipated this refund to repay the Australian credit card used for motel bills, that my property investments were not as successful as I would like or that I need the money to avoid the spectre of work for as long as possible and finance writing a book.

Miss A asks for my social security number and confirms the spelling of my name. I supply both, in eager anticipation. What’s happening? What must I do? When will my check arrive?

After a wait of perhaps thirty seconds, she repeats what I have said, but with the dates seen from their perspective. After a further wait, punctuated by small sounds indicating that she is reading and digesting information, she tells me that Someone sent me Something during August.

Someone.

Something.

I cannot suppress a slight degree of sarcasm at this departure from informative reporting, as I request a greater amount of detail of both the Someone and the Something. True, knowledge of the sender’s name and position in the Washington DC tax organization would fill no special void in my life, but the nature of the Something would be of use as it may explain the lack of refund check.

Yes, Miss A confirms. Someone sent Something. She is quite specific and adds that I have not replied, so my case is on hold, awaiting receipt of Information. Consistent with the deficient explanation of the Someone and the Something, there is no detail of the required Information. When I ask, Miss A suggests that I may accelerate the proceedings by providing the Information at my earliest convenience, wishes me a nice day and hangs up.

It is difficult to assess the level of frustration that this break in communication has and, at this point, I have a small degree of empathy with postal workers who buy a gun and shoot people. It may take a warped and socially dangerous mind to notice a connection between situation X, person Y and bullet Z on the Long Island Railroad but there are times – and this is one – where I can begin to see it.

For a moment, the only course of action that occurs to be is to smash my head against the table, but logic makes me understand that this would have no positive effect on my case and would look rather silly to passers by – not to mention that unlikely result of not hurting myself.

Having the phone still in my hand and my papers open on the table, I manage to summon the will to call back. This time a Mr. Bates answers but my subconscious designates him as Mr. B. He has no knowledge of my previous interaction with Miss A and I have to begin my story again.

Only a small part of my brain is needed to repeat the tale and the rest of my consciousness becomes dedicated to whether Mr. Bates would have been referred to at school as master however I can’t stop myself from sympathizing and pondering what effect the resulting nickname might have had on his passing into adulthood. I am so engrossed by this and the quite unattractive image of whether he regularly jacks off to free sex web cams on the internet, that I miss what he says when the phone next squawks into my ear.

I get one more piece of information that Miss A did not relate. The Something that Someone sent during August was a Special Notice, but the system does not elaborate on its contents. He promises to send an email to the Someone and request that the now identified Something should be re-sent. This is the end of the conversation and I retire, exhausted, to the coffee shop.

The Special Notice does not arrive. After a month, I call again and speak to a Miss C, who promises the same as Mr. Bates but adds that she guesses that it concerned proof of my current residence and employment.

Guessing isn’t a particularly good method of dealing with the country’s tax authorities so, during the next few days I collect a packet of everything imaginable that might prove my Florida residence, including apartment leases, employment contracts and scans of driving license. I send it by certified mail to the same address as on the tax forms, so I have a record of its delivery in Washington DC.

There follows no reply, no refund check and no re-sent Special Notice.

After another month, I speak to Miss D, who informs me that the system has no record of any of my correspondence or my phone calls. As far as she can tell, Someone is still awaiting my response to the Special Notice. She adds that her office is on the 5th floor of the building and the Someone is located on the 6th. My suggestion that she physically traverse the distance between the two is met with such a degree of incomprehension that it makes me reconsider whether I have been flippant and absurdly impractical in raising the matter.

In a flurry of enthusiasm a week later, brought about by the passing into a new year, I call a fifth time and get Miss E, who goes no further than any of her alphabetically designated predecessors. Miss E assures me, with the level of glee often heard by female TV news reporters covering global disasters with thousands of foreigners dead, that there is no supervisor to whom I can talk, no other number to call and no other address to which to write.

It is a result that surprises me no little bit and I would have been more astonished to get useful information. I am beginning to feel that this will become a lifetime project. I can predict a time, when I am old, gray and toothless, when I might be called as a guest onto a TV reality show based on this very circumstance. All the participants will be named by letters of the alphabet and they can only talk to each other by cell phone – probably naked. I can’t see what they’ll win, but maybe the chance to jack off to web cams, live.

Hey – it’s just as likely as getting my fucking tax refund….