My tax refund wasn't intercepted this year!?!

[apples and oranges]

For the past 8 years or so, any tax refunds I've received have been intercepted by a federal agency (which shall remain nameless). The money isn't even applied to anything, it's just taken. So I quickly wised up and filled out my W-4 in a way to break even. This year was different. I did everything the same and still noticed the refund meter saying I would get back $500. I didn't even bother to put in all the deductions I qualified for because I believed the money would be intercepted anyway. And surprise surprise, I have a check! I wonder if I should amend?

[iris27]

1. Worth a shot.

Worst that can happen is the adjusted amount is snatched.

I'm curious how they can take it and not apply it to anything (unless it's for back child support?), but understand if you don't want to share.

[notadmblnd]

2. yes, you should amend. Refunds are confiscated for things like child support

student loans and back taxes. State tax refunds will be taken if you have outstanding traffic violations. Something got cleared up, be happy and file an amended return. Did you ever call and find out why they were keeping your refunds to begin with? It's hard to believe that you would let money go to the gov without knowing why. It's none of my business and I'm not going to ask, but it is possible they were taking your refunds by mistake. If that is the case you can amend for the past several years.

[Statistical]

3. I am calling BS on "The money isn't even applied to anything, it's just taken."

If you owe a federal agency money you should be paying it. Pretty simple solution.

[Soylent Brice]

5. +1

[curlyred]

6. BS call #2

[apples and oranges]

7. when the collection agency would send the letter, the amount owed

never went down even with refunds in excess of $1000 allegedly applied to it. No it's not child support or anything like that, but with the amount owed being well over 15,000, I've decided to not restart payment since it's already off my credit report (doing anything with it would put it back on my credit).

[trotsky]

10. So you stated an error.

You said: "The money isn't even applied to anything, it's just taken."

Here you admit that it WAS applied to something.

Apples and oranges indeed.

[apples and oranges]

12. It was supposed to be applied to a debt, but the debt amount never went down

even after the money was taken year after year.

[Statistical]

15. Wouldn't resolving that issue make more sense than hiding from obligation to taxpayers?

Than coming on a board being happy about how you dodged your financial responsibility to fellow taxpayers.

If the agency handling the govt debt is not properly accounting for payments (in form of refund seizures) that can be remedied. IRS keeps record going back 10 years of all garnishments and where they were applied.

You have a right to demand proof payments were applied in itemized format. Doing that and/or seeking assistance for that on DU is one thing? Being happy you escaped federal debt well that is your business but don't expect sympathy from the taxpayers who's money you haven't repaid.

[michreject]

27. Penalties and interest

Keeps the figure growing.

You can run but you can't hide. It will catch up to you.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

11. collection agency? taking your refund?

I think not. The federal gov't is taking it an applying it to something...

sP

[Statistical]

14. $15,000? not child-support? federal garnishment? I am guess student loans.

All payments should be applied. If they aren't that is a legitimate grievance but can be remedied. The IRS will have records of all payments you can ask for proof that payments were applied. An itemized bill showing original debt any amounts added (interest, penalties) and any deductions (garnishments from tax return).

If you feel you can tax taxpayer money and run well that is another issue. While it may not be on your credit report there is no statute of limitations on student loan debt. Eventually you will need to work out a payment plan.

[jmm]

8. +3

If my money was being taken for 8 years and wasn't applied to anything my response wouldn't be to play with the number on my tax return so there would be less to take.

[JVS]

4. cha-ching!

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Try paying your student loans back or paying the court-ordered child support.

[apples and oranges]

13. judgmental much?

But no, the debt isn't with any of those agencies.

[sinkingfeeling]

16. The federal government can only garnish your tax refunds for 3 reasons.

Unpaid student loans, unpaid taxes, or student loans/other federally-funded loans.

Any private creditor would have to have gone to court and had a freeze placed on your bank account, where any deposit of your refund would have been frozen and then the court would have paid it to the creditor.

[Statistical]

19. Well technically any federal debt can result in an offset of tax return.

Those are the most common but:
Dept of Agriculture (owing for food stamps that you were not allowed to claim)
Dept of Veteran's Affairs (most commonly related to fraudulent VA home loan funding)

All offsets occurs as a result of Dept of Treasury (who also issues all refunds).

Any federal agency can place request with Dept of Treasury for an offset for any federal debt.

[ieoeja]

23. I hope it was a VA student loan. Because I wrote the software that goes after those tax refunds!

Of course, that was 24 years ago. I imagine my program was retired a long, long time ago.

[apples and oranges]

29. Close

It was not a loan. It's an education debt from the dept of defense.

[ieoeja]

33. Truth is I always thought the collections I worked on was kind of shitty.

Yes, they borrowed the money. But they did so with the unofficial understanding that paying the loans back was optional.

Sort of like here in Chicago when a Fire Department ambulance transports you to a hospital. They send you a bill. But the bill is automatically written off if not paid in 60 days. So if you have insurance to pay it, great! You just saved the taxpayers some money. If not, well, we don't want people dying just because they can't afford an ambulance, do we?

An education loan is nothing quite so dramatic. But as already stated, there was this unofficial understanding that paying it back was optional. So it was commonplace for a veteran to take the loan and try some college. Going back to school after years away from it is tough for anyone. And to be brutally non-PC honest, your average military veteran wasn't exactly your college type to begin with. But you never know. It might have taken and led to a great career.

For the vast majority, it did not. They took some classes then gave it up. For them the experiment was a bust. And it was an experiment most would probably have never attempted using their own money.

The widely held belief by Veterans Administration staff was that we should just write it all off as another benefit for the veterans (the loan program had already been cancelled by this time). And the Democratic Party largely agreed. But when Reagan won his landslide re-election, Democrats acceded to his wishes on the subject.

I believe the VA did make one last attempt to scuttle the project. Asked for an estimate, the programming staff came up with a project requiring 5 years effort by 20 IT staff members. The financial guy in the VA Central Office knew a former manager in the programming staff -- in '85 he was non-management in the tech support area because he was a lying, backstabbing SOB -- and asked his opinion. "Sounds about right for 20 programmers," he replied. "Mostly because of the effort it would take coordinating that many people. A couple good programmers could get it done in a year or two."

So the job was given to this guy who specifically wanted someone with no experience. Because an experienced programmer would "know" that a senior analyst was supposed to lead a group of junior analysts to develop the specifications that a bunch of senior programmers would guide a group of junior programmers in writing code to be sent to a QA team, and so on. An inexperienced programmer would hopefully just start writing code.

And that is what I did. Aided by the fact that it was at that time a 100% manual effort which meant the manual steps were written to exacting detail better than any specifications I have ever received in a quarter century career since.

I had a few qualms about screwing over the veterans. But at the time I mostly thought about the fact that they had borrowed the money and agreed to pay it back. It also helped that the only person who could make enough of a stink for it to get to our ears was some rich lawyer who could have paid his entire VA education loan from a single day's earnings. There was someone who actually got value for his loan.

And, of course, I needed a job. Screwing veterans for Ronald Reagan started me off to a pretty good career.




Postscript: another thing experienced programmers knew was to follow certain coding standards in COBOL that were originally written during the mainframe DOS days and which kept most COBOL programs DOS compatible probably to this very day. I know in my COBOL days I never met another COBOL programmer who did not do that. None of them knew that is what they were doing, but it was. And despite my showing them how to strip out the DOS compatibility and cut a two-hour runtime to five minutes (and that is *not* hyperbole), I could never get another COBOL programmer to do the same. Seems they did a better job programming the developers than they did the computers.

Can you imagine how crappy all the PC software would be today if it was all written for DOS compatibility? I wonder how much of the demise of the mainframes was due to bad COBOL programming standards.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

20. but but but...he says a COLLECTION AGENCY

is seizing his money...cause you know, they ARE all powerful. </snark>

Wouldn't the deposit still be seen in the account though immediately withdrawn? Either way, he is negligent at best and fraudulent at worst...

sP

[Statistical]

24. Sometimes govt agencies do contract out to collection agencies.

However even if the debt is with a collection agency he is mistaken.

Any offset of a tax return would be by Dept of Treasury and that can only be requested by a govt agency.

Now theoretically it is possible that say he had a student loan dept. Dept of Education hands it over to collection agency. Dept of Treasury offsets tax returns. Say due to electronic mixup the notices from collection agency never show debt going down.

Still even in that scenario the moral and responsible thing to do would be to get it fixed (contact IRS & collection agency) make sure funds offset from tax return are being applied, and work out payment plan for balance.

Even giving a lot of benefit of doubt the the OP story it is still crappy.

[jmm]

28. That happened to me.

My refund was withheld one year. While looking into it I realized there was a problem with the way my student loans were consolidated and the situation was contracted to a collection agency. It did take awhile to straighten up but I was able to make sure my credit report was cleared of any negative comments and the money that was withheld was applied to what I owed.

[ieoeja]

17. Kicked (cause I have a feeling this is going to be funny)

And, no, you shouldn't amend.

[Iggo]

18. Oh, good times.

I remember that first unexpected and unintercepted tax refund check I got.

After 5 years of nothing, that was a real good feeling.

[BlooInBloo]

21. I'm pretty sure Obama is confiscating tax refund money for his FEMA reeducation camps.

[petronius]

25. Almost certainly true. Also, those pennies we round off on our returns?

Those actually add up to a huge amount of money, and it's all being siphoned to a secret account at the DNC...

(/Superman ripoff)

[Obamanaut]

22. And it only took 8 years or so to adjust the w4 so the proper amount

would be withheld.

[FirstLight]

26. Well this gives me hope

I have a student loan that has been taking my return for years now too....maybe there's some relief in there due to the economy?

It always baffled me, if I am making little enough to qualify for EIC, then obviously i need that money to survive...but nope, the student loan people always took it. It usually covered interest only. and yes, i have been directed to a private collection agency instead of the dept of education many times... so don't think that the govt doesn't sell our debts too.

[DatManFromNawlins]

31. My collection agency...

... put my loan into rehab. In 4 months, the default will come off my credit report and the loan will be cycled back into the market. I'll only owe like $1300 on it when this happens.

http://ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/DCS/rehabilitation.html

I tried to pay it all at once, but the default would stay on the credit report if I did so. Freaking hoops you gotta jump through sometimes.

[FirstLight]

32. thanks for the info...bookmarking!

I'm waiting for my new freelance venture to have an iron clad contract before I committ to any payments, money has been scarce as of late for sure...

[Greyhound]

30. You managed to bring out one of the rare "lurking authoritarian sock puppets", thanks.

Several of the usual suspects popped up, but you got one of the stealth disrupters to come out.
:thumbsup:

[apples and oranges]

34. Too bad most of you missed the point:

My point is that there appears to be some kind of moratorium on the treasury offset program which allowed agencies to intercept tax refunds in past years. That is a good thing as it puts more money into the pockets of people who are already struggling. I didn't defraud the government as they were free to intercept my refund like they usually do.

Those of you who chose to attack me should take comfort in the fact that the offset program will probably be reinstated at some point. Have a nice day!

[Odin2005]

35. I call BS on your story. Take your anti-IRS crap elsewhere, Freeper.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

36. Maybe you should let somebody else do your taxes.

If you're having so much trouble with addition and subtraction.