While I am not impoverished, I am certainly not one of the world's wealthy. I do not own a mansion or a yacht, and money does not grow on trees for me.
That is not a complaint, but a statement of fact. And this being the fact, when tax time hit; I rushed to file my taxes in anticipation or a juicy refund.
I was jazzed. The idea of having a nice chunk of cash to pay bills, buy some needed items, and stash some savings for an emergency fund really thrilled me. So I got my paper work together and filed on the twenty first of January.
TurboTax sent my return to the IRS, or so they claimed. With much anticipation, I checked the IRS' website, "Where's My Refund". They claim the website and mobile app allows you to track the progress of your return. The site, the app and the automated phone line are incredibly adept at providing absolutely no valuable information whatsoever.
The IRS didn't even know who I was. In fact when I called and spoke to a person, they said that I needed to have TurboTax resubmit the return. So I spoke to TurboTax support. They informed me that the returns were transmitted and there was no reason the IRS would not happen. This back and forth went on for days.
After some time, TurboTax sent me a notice that the IRS was having a difference of freakin' opinion with the form 8863, one of the educational credits. It had somehow done the computers wrong, and there were hard feelings between them.
I researched the problem. Rumors were flying across the internet, and news bureaus briefly touched upon the problem. Speculation of when the IRS would get around to the processing abounded. Finally the news broke, mid-February, maybe March. People were unhappy.
February 14th, TurboTax sent me a notice that indeed, my taxes were accepted by the IRS. They would be processed.
So the wait resumed. I started checking the "Where's my Refund" site. Finally, the IRS acknowledged my existence. My return status went from returning an error that I did not exist, to showing a happy orange progress bar, that gleefully reporting my return as received.
Now, I had to wait the 48-72 hours for my return status to update. The allotted time passed, but no progress to the next happy bar of return joy. So I continued to wait.
I am still waiting. I called the awesomeness that is the customer service department of the IRS, to get my status. I was read a script about congress being the cause of the delay and told to wait. My taxes have been processing for over a month and despite the fact that the IRS promised they would pay interest on all taxes that take over 21 days to process from when they were submitted, they got around it by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the returns in question until the 14th, therefore resetting the clock to 21 days from the 14th. Way to cheat, IRS!
Now there are rumors that they have to manually reconcile the 8863 returns because they are flagged in the error department.
So I wait for the virgin sacrifices, and the secret rituals to commence, before my money sees the light of the day. DAMN YOU, IRS ELDER BEAST! You will pay for your insolent abuse of the Alienstonerbot! Well, by pay I mean I will complain a lot and write sharp criticism of your evil ways.
So here is my only viable response, bad poetry! These are some Haiku I wrote about tax time. Since the IRS is a force of nature at this point, I think they are legit.
Waiting for my check.
8863 won't process.
IRS you suck.
Submitted early,
but still stuck in processing.
Damn you IRS!
Thought I'd pay my bills,
with my big tax refund check.
IRS said "not"!
I like food and heat.
When I pay late, they go off.
IRS pays late.
I like money!
and so does the IRS.
They won't give me mine.
Click here for many people complaining about their taxes!