On the phone with the IRS

I so wish I were Mr Lileks: I could make a hilarious story out of this.

My state's department of revenue just noticed a discrepancy between my federal return and my state return from 2002, and they wanted me to explain myself. The discrepancy came about because the IRS made some changes to my federal return. At the time I couldn't actually find the mistakes the IRS claimed I had made, but when the IRS tells you you owe money, you just write a check, right? But in order to figure out how to revise the state return, I needed to determine what exactly had gone wrong with my 2002 federal return. So I head off to a tax preparer's office and happened to catch them during the eight hours a week they're open at present. Tax Lady and I fought our way back through the cobwebs to her office, where she looked over my return and said she couldn't figure out where I had gone wrong. Could I go home and get all my receipts and W-2s and things? Sure. Twenty minutes later I'm back, she's entering numbers in software, and still, no go. The IRS has me with $5000 of income that neither of us can locate. The cryptic letter I had received from the IRS merely said I had made mistakes on Schedules A and D, but we couldn't find any such mistakes. You're going to have to call the IRS, Tax Lady said.

Home. IRS. Long wait. Finally, an answer. A polite and helpful woman doesn't quite understand my problem. When I finally get her to understand it, she puts me on hold. Five minutes later: "There were problems with Schedules A and D." Me: "Yes, I know that. But what were the problems?" Her: "I can't tell you that, but I'll transfer you to someone who knows about Schedule D."

Really long wait. Mrs Chung comes on the line (her real name -- she has a thick accent that does occasionally impede understanding, and I'm rather good with accents). Explain it all again. Oddly, she can pull up my 1040 but not my Schedule D. But man, is she unpleasant -- easily exasperated, short-tempered, belligerent, obviously convinced even before I open my mouth that I'm an idiot and very likely a tax cheat. She tells me I can't claim a capital loss on my 1040, that you can't enter anything less than 0. Tells me so repeatedly, though I know perfectly well that's not true. Sample dialogue:

Mrs Chung: "Look on page 42."
Me: "It's not on page 42."
Mrs Chung: "Page 42! Page 42! Look on page 42!"
Me: "It's not on page 42 in the 2002 book."
Mrs Chung: "You didn't tell me it was 2002."
Me: "Yes, I did."
Mrs Chung: "I didn't hear you."

But here's the thing. About half an hour into this most unpleasant discussion, it dawned on her what had happened. The IRS had for some reason counted the $3000 gross proceeds from a stock sale as a $3000 capital gain, when in fact it represented a $2000 capital loss. Voila! That's where that extra $5000 income came from. And it became evident that I had in fact filled out my Schedule D correctly, and the IRS had screwed it up. And do you know, she instantly became polite, helpful, almost obsequious. Where before she had snapped at me if I didn't have an instant answer to a complicated question ("Is line 14 greater than, but not in excess of, the difference between the sum of lines 26 and 73 and the product of line 7a and your mother's high-school graduation year?"), she now patiently instructed me on where to send the letter that you'd better believe I'll be sending.

Incidentally, I never did get to ask about my Schedule A. That's a different department. But Mrs Chung was very helpful in suggesting a time I could call back when they were not very busy, because "I know you're probably tired of talking on the phone right now." Thanks, Mrs Chung. Your Dr Jekyll personality has been a pleasure to deal with.