The form the IRS gives you to file an appeal (form 12509 - Statement of Disagreement) is one page with about an inch of writing at the top ("Purpose of form.....) and then many many lines. Like all Innocent Spouse forms, there usually isn't enough room to explain your answer. It's constricting - the horizontal lines running across the page, if you turn the page 90 degrees, those lines go vertical. Well, there you have the bars of a prison, the white page they're on is endless freedom beyond them.
I'm trapped on the lines. It reminds me of "on the ropes" - the phrase my attorney once told me early in the divorce and my position in it. When my ex was hording everything - our son, both homes, everything. "You've got to take a few punches," he explained, during the five year long fight. In the third year, I began to understand the phrase, after winning a few rounds (hearing) myself.
On those lines I have to try and explain my very human situation, yet again, in inhuman language and according to accounting-like, legal definations. Hardest of all - to prove I did not know something (that's a whole blog in and of itself.....)
When I submitted my initial request in 2002, it was lost for three years. I submitted a new one in 2005 - and more than a year later got a follow up questionnaire. The documents and written answers I supplied totaled more than 100 pages.
For a change, I think on this form I'll be brief. Like most of what you do, as an honest taxpayer with the IRS, is wait and fill out formalities. This is another formality - til I have to put together the official appeal.
Or, maybe they can just turn me down outright? Who knows. Really, I doubt many people outside the Innocent Spouse division in Covington Kentucky, know. And those that do, well, let's just they require lots of money in order to get them to share their knowledge with you. More money than I have, as most honest taxpayers arent' wealthy.
But I have a day off today from computer nursing, so I think I'll mentally take the day off too from IRS work. I have two weeks left to file this form. And the longer I wait, the more time my ex has to sell the house in Michigan - although he overpriced it by $200,000 in my opinion.
What I've learned by going through all this, since I don't have counsel and each agent either doesn't inform you of anything, or gives you incorrect information, misinformation , or a mixture of both sprinkled with a pinch of truth and useful info, is attempting to get Innocent Spouse relief stops seizure action. Also filing for a CDC hearing. An offer-in-compromise. Any type of action. So, even in this not great real estate market, I think it's better to get the house sold, so hopefully everyone with liens on the house will get paid. Lord knows if the IRS gets it, they'll auction it off at just enough to pay themselves and the bank holding the mortgage. There are three attorneys before me at this feeding trough.
On a more human side of this, and there is a human side to this on my blog, as opposed to the machine of the IRS, I'm tired. I'm so tired of huge organizations and their little well-versed know-it-all cogs spouting off their limited speciality just be hear themselves pontificate and lord their power over you. It's not the IRS, it's the system really. Everywhere you look. Healthcare, banking, governments at all levels, credit card shopping, book publishing, sales, even marathons like the Chicago. Blowing huge quantitles of people through every day to extract the most amount of dollars to line the pockets of a few at the top. Trick is, I've found, it not to let their experience make you - make you're own experience out it. Twist your mind to make it interesting, challenging, fun even.
Yet the sad thing is, those know-it-all cogs in their $70,000 a year salaried jobs, judge and jury for all the rest, the gatekeepers between the upper echelons and most honest taxpayers, well, let's just say they're clueless. Just as I was. Until all the fall-out from my recent divorce and started settling in around me. And I realize now how trapped I am.
As a positive person, I realize this is a gift: Won't we all, at the end of our lives, end up trapped, in a dying body, with no way out to avoid the reality of the situation?
As the wise blogger I'm in contact with reminded me: Death and taxes - that's all that's guaranteed.
Even those those conmen and others predisposed to cheat on their taxes have to face death eventually. So, the gift: Placed in another nebulous situation, with no clear end in site, or one that may end with me being in so much debt I can never begin to dig my way out, there is ultimately the only thing left that, as to those on their deathbeds, can give me freedom. My mind. Meditation. Going to that place of peace, always available, simply by not thinking and just being.
It's a beautiful day - I'll take my baby daughter for a walk now.
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Mission impossible
Mark Everson, commissioner of the IRS, states in a message to taxpayers, "To protect the honest taxpayer, we have strengthened enforcement of the tax laws. The vast majority of taxpayers pay honestly and accurately, and they have every right to expect their neighbors and competitors to do the same."
This blog will document my ongoing efforts to extract myself from the financially oppressive control of the IRS during and after being married to a businessman who was less than forthright with his finances. Here's what happened when I tried to be honest and make things right. A little upfront warning: don't try this at home. You'll end up where I am, and believe me, it's tedious at best.
The IRS Mission, according to the 2006 1040 instruction booklet, is, "Provide America's taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsiblities and by applying the tax law with integrity and fairness to all."
My Mission: In dealing with the IRS since a joint-income tax return field audit was started in July 2002, I hope to help as many friends as possible, in like circumstances, avoid the "top quality service" of such a fair and honest organization as the IRS. It's not worth it. Don't ever try to be a good American in this realm. Protect yourself.
This blog will document my ongoing efforts to extract myself from the financially oppressive control of the IRS during and after being married to a businessman who was less than forthright with his finances. Here's what happened when I tried to be honest and make things right. A little upfront warning: don't try this at home. You'll end up where I am, and believe me, it's tedious at best.
The IRS Mission, according to the 2006 1040 instruction booklet, is, "Provide America's taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsiblities and by applying the tax law with integrity and fairness to all."
My Mission: In dealing with the IRS since a joint-income tax return field audit was started in July 2002, I hope to help as many friends as possible, in like circumstances, avoid the "top quality service" of such a fair and honest organization as the IRS. It's not worth it. Don't ever try to be a good American in this realm. Protect yourself.
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