The IRS - the world wide leader in efficiency and customer service!

I may have mentioned once or twice in the past four years that Serbia is the master of Bureaucracy.  You can count on everything taking twice as long and usually several days to get all the completed paperwork turned in.  I thought this was the worst, until I had a little run in with America's won IRS.

In April we recieved a notice that our refund had been changed to $0.00.  You are reading that correctly, the IRS had reduced our refund to nothing, nista, nada.   So on April 22 I made my first of 12 calls to this well oiled machine.  After over an hour of holds and transfers (this would be the norm) I was told that we did not qualify for the Child Tax Credit.  But we did, so shockingly the IRS made a mistake which was admitted to on the third phone call.  (Basically some auditor misread our W2, don't lose hope America).  This was going to be easy all we needed to do was fax our Tax return to them. I chuckled and said "you meant scan and email, right, not fax".  The reply "sir we do not have access to email".  So apparently I was supposed to hop in my time machine and go back to 1988 so I could have access to a fax machine, because the huge agency that the IRS is does not have access to email.  (I understand people use faxes still, but I know no one in Serbia with a fax machine and if they had one they were not going to let me fax a 15 page document internationally).  So our company in the states faxed the documents twice, because a subsequent call told me the first one did not make it (or was misplaced is probably more like it).  After that we were told our paperwork would be reviewed and that would take 6-8 weeks.  So it took two weeks to steal my money and will take two months to get it back... well played IRS.
I made a few calls just checking on the progress and write before our 8 weeks was up we received another notice that it would be 40 more days.   Remember this was not to get the money this was to review the paperwork to see if we qualified for the money that they had already admitted to was ours.  GRRRRRR!

Finally this week the deadline passed and I called the IRS for the 12th time (and lets be honest not the last time).  I was told that we did qualify for the refund!  I said then the check is on the way, correct.  Nope not correct, they were waiting to see if I called before they mailed the check.  They gave me the lame, we needed an address excuse.  So the address I had given you the past 11 calls and that is on my tax return, surely that would have worked. I was very kind and happy to know that in 4-6 weeks we should receive our refund.  The IRS - the world wide leader in efficiency and customer service!

So to review our tax return was filed in February and we hope to receive our refund in November, about two months before we file again!

As a side note if you have to deal with the IRS and a MRS. Nelson answers your call, hang up and start over.  She is the rudest lady in the entire organization.