I seem to be channeling Charlie Brown this week. You would too, in my position.While in the US last month Mr. Smith and I were under a bit of pressure. Grandpa Smith hadn't decided whether or not he was going to "go into the light" and each day he seemed to lean a different direction. Grandma Smith was doing better, but still not great. I was on large amounts of pain killers and looked liked I had lost a fight with a car grill (which I had) and our kids were cranky because they were spending a lot of time babysitting each other and not much else. Then came The Letters. Dun dun duuuuuh!
Mr. Smith and I each received our own copy of a letter from our old friends at the Eye. Are. Ess., if you know what I mean. (Sorry for the code but there is no way Google is going to get me on that one!) It seems that our mid-April bill collector wanted to take a closer look at our numbers for the year 2006. Particularly the number of dependants.
What? Isn't seven kids the norm?
Oddly enough the same thing happened last year. We received a letter asking for the same information for 2005. We called the gentleman assigned to our case and explained to him that we couldn't make our scheduled appointment with him, and we certainly couldn't bring our kids and the documents to prove they had lived with us in 2005, because we were currently living in India and most of our documents would be living in a storage pod for two more years. We all had a good chuckle, he approved our 2005 return and the case was closed.
Until this year. Once again we crossed our fingers and called the woman assigned to our new case, hoping to have the same pleasant, yet short, conversation. No such luck. She was very understanding about our situation and agreed that we couldn't show up in person...however, she still wanted us to magically produce documents proving that our seven little deductions existed, were ours, had the Social Security Numbers we said they did, and had lived at the same address we did during 2006. Lovely.
(Excuse me for a moment while I compose myself and control the urge to rant and rave against a very powerful agency in very a public forum.)
So, this week we have spent hours upon hours searching, scanning, emailing and faxing every scrap of paper that has a child's name and a 2006 date on it and generally trying not to have a nervous breakdown. I think we may have pulled it off.
Until next year.
6 comments:
I don't get it - is over 6 kids a flag for the IRS? Sheesh...better you than me - I never would have found all the documentation. Unless a blog would count...you think?
Well I hope that is the last that you have to deal with it.
Ugh! That is my biggest fear. Mostly because I am so terrible at keeping records. I hope they have been satisfied
I have an idea... send Dennis the Mence to spend a week with the "lady". OR you could send all seven. What's with the "you know who" department. You have had 7 kids for over 5 years now. You could have your old landlord verify the seven sets of finger prints in the house. Oh, I could go on and on. ha ha. Good luck!
Isn't is amazing how we are supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty", but with this particular organization, you are guilty until you can prove your innocence?
Pfft! (I would write more but the EYE..ARE..ESS makes me twitch.)
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