Is there a way to talk to a real person at the IRS?

[noblepa]

I have a problem.

For once, this year, I completed my 1040 early. To my surprise, I am due a refund.

I mailed my return about Jan. 30, 2022 for the 2021 tax year. Since I live in Ohio and I was not including a payment, I mailed it to the center in Ogden, Utah, as I interpreted the instructions to tell me to.

Shortly after I mailed it, I received a letter from the IRS, saying that, on my 2020 tax return, I had calculated the standard deduction incorrectly. I forgot to take into account that both my wife and I were over 65 in 2018, so the deduction was too small. They later sent me a check to refund the resulting overpayment.

When I got that letter, I realized that I had made the same mistake on my 2021 return, so I sent off a 1040x, amended return. I also sent that to the Ogden office.

Now, it gets interesting. I kept watching the "Where's My Refund" page on the IRS website. The original 1040 never showed up and I have not received the refund. However, the 1040x DOES appear on their website, as does the amended return I filed for 2019 (I made the same mistake that year, too).

When I try to call the IRS, I can find no way to connect to a live person. My only relevant option is the phone equivalent of the "Where's My Refund" webpage. It also tells me that there is no record of the return.

Finally, about three weeks ago, I got fed up and mailed another 1040, again to Ogden. This return has still not shown up on the webpage, either.

I have looked carefully at the IRS website, and I see no place to mail a query, either snail-mail or e-mail, nor a phone number that is anything other than the automated line that has proven to be worthless.

Is my only recourse to schedule an appointment with the local IRS office in downtown Cleveland, take all my paperwork and try to explain to someone exactly what I did and hope that they can help me find my return?

Even with the deliberate sabotage that Postmaster General DeJoy is visiting upon the USPS, they should have received my return by now.

[The Observer]

It has been a steady decline for the IRS in being able to handle person-to-person contacts, whether by phone or in-person. The pandemic only compounded the problem of the manpower reduction of customer service employees. The bottom line is that it is nearly impossible now for anyone to pick up the phone and get hold of a "real" person in regards to their tax issue(s).

At this point your best course of action is to visit your local office to see if anyone is there that can help you. You may need t confirm that there is a Taxpayer Assistant unit at the local office; otherwise you are probably not going to be able to get through the door, let alone find someone who can assist you.

If the above is not working or possible, then you may want to contact the Taxpayer Advocate office that covers your area to see if they will (1) answer the phone and (2) be able to help you.

Your return issue will probably get resolved at some point in the future without your intervention, but that is beside the point in regards to getting what is owed to you in a timely manner. If the IRS believes that the delay of processing your refund was their fault, they will also issue an additional amount as interest to you.

[noblepa]

Thanks, Observer.

That's kind of what I thought. At first, I thought that maybe my first return was lost in the mail, or that I sent it to the wrong processing center. But, the two amended returns that I sent, seemed to have been received at Ogden.

I mailed the first return on Jan. 30, 2022 and the second on May 13, 2022. It is now June 8. That should have been enough time for it to get to Ogden, UT from Cleveland, OH.

BTW, when I log on to my account at IRS.GOV, it still says that I have not filed my 2021 return yet.

[LaVidaRoja]

Another option is to contact your local Congress-critter. When I did a 90-day detail to the local Problem Resolution Office (this was in the last century); each Congressman had an aide who handled complaints about the IRS. Since I was in the old Los Angeles office, there were a LOT of Congressmen involved. After every election, we had to school the aides about what they needed their clients to supply before we would talk to them. Many refused to sign a disclosure form! (This usually caused the aide to understand that the "IRS abuse" was bogus)

[Arthur Rubin]

Another option is to contact your local Congress-critter.

This may not be a good time to contact your Congress-critter. With reapportionment and the upcoming elections, your current Congress-critter may not your Congress-critter next year.

[Cathulhu]

La Vida Roja is correct; Congressional inquiries (you gripe to your congressperson, an aide sends it on with a cover letter) are always kicked up to Problem Resolution for attention. Since taxpayer services are a total joke; understaffed, massively overworked and hugely behind on EVERYTHING, I don't know of any other way these days to get some help.

I could be outdated; I retired from IRS over a decade ago now. But from what I've followed, poor old taxpayer services is pretty much toast.

Back in my day, filing an amended return before the original completed processing was pretty much an automatic six month delay. Essentially it caused the original to kick out of computer processing and wait to be matched up with the1040X and then processed by a human. There are not enough trained humans.

[Arthur Rubin]

There are not enough trained humans.

We need to work on training other primates....

[Judge Roy Bean]

I gave up over seven years ago. I just keep filing extensions then 0$-owed returns even though the IRS actually owes us a little bit of money each year. They have simply ignored multiple amended returns. Not a thing in the mail for years now. I'll probably be long gone before they ever actually have someone to even look at it. The last person I actually talked to said they had no record of any amendments and all they wanted was a tiny, yet bogus late-filing fee for a year we had actually filed an extension for. I went ahead and paid it. When I asked who I could talk to they said there wasn't anyone in that department any more and to try again filing the next year.

Such is life in our modern age.

[The Observer]

I gave up over seven years ago. I just keep filing extensions then 0$-owed returns even though the IRS actually owes us a little bit of money each year. They have simply ignored multiple amended returns.

My wild guess is that the processing of your zero returns merely agreed what the IRS system and records already had surmised would be your unpaid tax liability for the year after taking into account what had been reported to the IRS. So the amended returns would have not been seen as a priority. Sadly enough, there are current news articles out that stated that the IRS destroyed 30 million tax filing documents. Not sure if this included amended returns, but it's possible.

[The Observer]

Another option is to contact your local Congress-critter. When I did a 90-day detail to the local Problem Resolution Office (this was in the last century);

The Problem Resolution office disappeared into the Taxpayer Advocate's program sometime in the early 2000's. Wherever a congressional inquiry starts, it ends up being controlled or monitored at the TAO level.

[Judge Roy Bean]

I gave up over seven years ago. I just keep filing extensions then 0$-owed returns even though the IRS actually owes us a little bit of money each year. They have simply ignored multiple amended returns.

My wild guess is that the processing of your zero returns merely agreed what the IRS system and records already had surmised would be your unpaid tax liability for the year after taking into account what had been reported to the IRS. So the amended returns would have not been seen as a priority. Sadly enough, there are current news articles out that stated that the IRS destroyed 30 million tax filing documents. Not sure if this included amended returns, but it's possible.

Thanks - I suppose that could be the case.