I haven't posted a rant for a while, so here is the current one, which may actually prove useful to someone else.
It was recently brought to my attention that the United States Internal Revenue Service went through its records for 1999 and noticed (among other things I am sure) that while I gave a Maryland address on my federal taxes that year I did not file a Maryland tax return. Therefore, it informed the tax people in Baltimore, I must owe Maryland taxes (plus four years of interest) on my income for that year. Fortunately I discovered this before attempting to claim any type of refund, which would have been munched by this little misapprehension of theirs, and considering that the State of Maryland still owes me child support it was "helping" me to collect back in 1993 or 94, it probably would have been gone for good. It seems that if you use an address in a given state the IRS program assumes you lived in that state for the entire year, and be damned with what it says in the "Maryland taxable income" "Washington taxable income" and "West Virginia taxable income" fields of your W-2. (For example) In my own case I did live in Maryland for a couple of months before moving out to West Virginia in search of more living space. I filed my federal taxes as I was leaving West Virginia for New Mexico, and gave an address in Maryland belonging to a friend who owns her house and plans to be there for the next twenty years or so, simply to ensure that I got the resulting check. ::sigh:: Anyway, since they have insisted, I have had them send me the appropriate forms, and will be mailing it all in whenever they get me a copy of my W-2's. It seems that in reality I failed to claim a refund of the $157 in MD State taxes that were withheld that year. BAD Dana, BAD!<g> This isn't really a whine, though. If they had stuck me for the several thousand dollars they showed me as owing, THAT would have been a whine. The scary thing is, though, that although I talked to a number of offices at the Internal Revenue Service, not one of them could tell me how much I was supposed to owe the State of Maryland. (At one point I was considering the path of inertia, assuming that I must owe the money if they said I did, and letting them take it out of my next refund). As far as the IRS was concerned, any refund to me tripped a flag and the money went into a black box somewhere. Finally, a supervisor a couple of levels up in the Maryland State Dept of Taxation confirmed for me that the offset was for MD tax on my entire 1999 federal adjusted gross income, based on information provided by the IRS. Plus interest. The same person then read off to me the numbers on my federal W-2 that said otherwise, allowing me to calculate my taxes, as I did not remember why (or if) I had failed to file MD taxes that year. Talk about the right hand and the left. Moral of the story: This is apparently some sort of new federal data mining project. If anyone moves into or out of a state during a tax year, they should check for this, or potentially find themselves being charged way more state tax than they actually owe... Dana ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=t:5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com
