I just learned this morning, that those of us who live in the parishes(counties) hit by Hurricane Katrina, can have an automatic extension of filing deadline and automatic extension without penalty of monies owed to IRS, both until August 28, 2006. (Of course, they wait until the last minute to TELL people this) The document I was reading, stated that we have to call an 800 number to identify ourselves as living in those parishes affected and then write HURRICANE KATRINA in red at the top of our returns when they are finally filed.
I just spent approximately 30 minutes sitting on hold waiting for 'the next available representative'. She finally came on the line and was laughing like she had just told herself a joke she had never heard before. I laughed and said "now, you are having entirely too much fun this morning". I was trying to be jovial and pleasant to her. She apologized and I told her it was no problem. I was glad she was enjoying her job.
Then we go into the reason for my call. Now I have always heard that IRS people talk in circles and never give you a straight answer and now I believe it.
I could have gotten more information from a trained monkey! After talking with this person for 10 minutes and going back and forth with what I had read and what she wanted me to say to her, I got so confused and frustrated, I told her to just FORGET IT!!!!!!!! And she pleasantly said, Ok, thank you for calling the I..........I hung up before she finished.ARGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! This is one of those times that if I could have reached through the phone, I would have shaken her till her head flopped.
Why can't life just be easy? Why can't we just go along in life and not have to fight these incessant battles? I get tired of the 'fighting life syndrome'. I have to fight with the power company because they make my power blink every day and I have to reset everything everyday when I get home. I have to fight with the Waste Management people that FORGET to pick up our garbage about half the time. We PAY for this 'service'! I find a product I like and use it for years, then the maker discontinues it. WHY WHY WHY WHY?????????? What is up with this world? Is everybody out to piss everybody else off? WTF????
I used to work in the same building as IRS collections dept did. I would talk to one of the gals there quite often. She told me once about how she had "forgot" to check her email for almost a month. When her supervisor finally MADE her check it there were 20,000 emails. She said that she felt a little embarrassed because some were from tax payers that she was collecting against and one guy ended up losing his home because she didn't see the emails from him and she had thought that he was ignoring her collections demand. Her response? "Oh well, he shouldn't trust email". Then she giggled. And this was a woman in her late 50's so she should have known better if you ask me.