Rant - Wonderful World of Internet

[Snaggletooth]

This is a familiar rant from me - if you don't wanna hear it again, I'll understand if you want to move on.

Recently there was a communique release from the Tennessee Department of Revenue. The headline was an announcement that the department was "modernizing the decades-old pattern of dealing with taxpayer problems."

Sounds wonderful, right? What is really going on: The department is slashing the personnel of the taxpayer assistance centers and depending on taxpayers to utilize the websites. My experience with other states is that an assessment is made, the taxpayer has no way to contact the state to fix the problem, and eventually the assessment goes to collections where a levy is ordered.

Why shouldn't people be deliriously happy with this futuristic solution? It is only a solution for the State.

1) The population base is becoming more computer literate, but not as quickly as institutions are bailing out of support.
2) A website cannot be programmed extensively enough to explain all the technicalities that taxpayers encounter. The best they usually have is a set of "frequently asked questions." And this becomes so voluminous that the taxpayers cannot navigate to what is relevant.
3) More than half of the ugly "balance due" notices are the result of errors by the taxing authorities, NOT the taxpayers. Nowhere on this "cure-all" website is there an allowance to correct errors by the State.
4) In recent years it has become quicker to write a letter than to find a real person to talk to. Letters tend to go into a "black hole" and it is no one's responsibility at the state to acknowledge or track correspondence.
5) Collection departments still have contact capabilities, obviously states will put forth some resources for collecting money. But the collection departments quickly disavow any responsibility for fixing a mess or rectifying a problem the taxpayer or state may be having.

Suggestions for confronting these problems?
a) Quit whining. We are hopeless unable to stop the rapid conversion to the wonderful world of the internet.
b) Start by copying the taxpayers' State Representative on every letter where the taxpayer has no remedy.
c) ????
d) ????
e) ????

[TAXNJ]

b.
c. Also, get your colleagues to protest.
d. Run for political office

[Rapid Robert]

I don't disagree with the problem you are ranting about. However it's not the fault of the internet! It's the politicians who make the tax laws and then decide how much to fund the tax administration bureau.

As an example of how the internet can actually work to our advantage, someone I know recently had an unknown charge show up on a credit card, it wasn't fraud but it was a vendor who used Paypal to process the payment (just like I sometimes do with my tax clients), and the charge description didn't include anything to identify the vendor. Disputing the charge (with reason provided from a pick list) and getting an automatic 30-day hold from the bank, along with a promise to investigate, was super easy using the internet.

By the way I don't think the credit card company provides this super easy way to question a charge out of the goodness of their black corporate heart, it is because the government has laws and regulations that require it. So if the government can get a bank to use the internet as a problem-solving tool for consumers, they could do it with the tax department too if so desired.

Of course, we won't even think about the possibility that some politicians might want to deliberately cripple the tax department to help rile up their voting base.

[Snaggletooth]

Targeting the Real Problem

I don't disagree with the problem you are ranting about. However it's not the fault of the internet! It's the politicians who make the tax laws and then decide how much to fund the tax administration bureau.

... it is because the government has laws and regulations that require it.

Good observation Robert. Of course, the internet is not the real source of the problem but bureaucrats who want to use it to short-circuit problems and not be accountable for their decisions. It is also remarkable that the govt has all these laws and regulations, as you say, but they somehow manage to exempt themselves from all of them.

There has been mention of notifying your elected officials to get results. This might work on a case-by-case basis, but these very officials are at the heart of the problem. They want to squeeze every penny of spending money out of the taxing authorities, and are not really interested in funding them to take care of customers.

The famous Nina Olsen annual letter this year (that never really brings any action) made mention that the IRS is trying to depend increasingly on taxpayer use of websites, and this is a major source of problems.