Saturday, July 21, 2007

Reasons to take math in college.

The other day I received the scariest letter anyone can ever receive. It wasn’t a death threat. It wasn’t news from my doctor that I had contracted some rare disease. It was a letter from the IRS saying I had made a mistake on my taxes.

It was just a regular envelope that you wouldn’t give a second thought to if it didn’t say Internal Revenue Service at the top left corner. Tax season was months gone-by and I had already received my tax refund, so I knew it couldn’t be anything good. I took a deep breath and ripped open the envelope. Glaring back at me in big, bold letters were the words “We found problems with your Form 1040.”

It was a good thing I took that deep breath, because breathing wasn’t so easy after that.

Apparently, I made a subtraction on line 7 for my federally taxed Illinois income tax refund but could only subtract the amount if I had reported it as income on line ten of the U.S. 1040 and reported it on the standard U.S. 1040 form, but I had submitted it through the U.S. 1040EZ form which does not permit entitlement to the subtraction.

Yeah, I didn’t know what the hell that meant either.

All I knew is that I had made a mistake. And the IRS doesn’t like mistakes. All they like is money. Would the error totally throw off my tax calculations resulting in me owing massive amounts in back taxes? Would the IRS attach hefty fines for making such a mistake?

I flipped through the sheets looking for the invoice and finally discovered the amount I owed.

What began as a terrifying tax bulletin turned out to be the best bill I’ve ever gotten. It’s going to be kind of fun writing a check for zero dollars and zero cents.