Inattentive IRS

There's no warm fuzzy feeling that can equal receiving a thick envelople in the mail, with ''The Infernal Revenue Service'' as the return address. Received it yesterday. Halfway afraid it was a random audit. But, no: they said they had no record of my 2003 tax return, and could I please file it, or provide them with a photocopy?

Thing is, I had received an identical letter on August 18th. I'd wrote up a cover letter, printed out my scanned copies (I scan my tax returns now, rather than photocopy), and mailed it out the next day.

Mail takes exactly a week from Brisbane to Seattle; maybe add an extra day for Pennsylvania. So, someone had more than a month to process my letter and realize ''Oh, our mistake!''

Instead, they send out an identical letter. And not even a follow-up letter; exactly the same.

So, I added an additional paragraph -- polite, but pointed! -- to my original cover letter, and printed the whole darned thing again. I'll mail it this afternoon.


It costs me AU$3.60 [US$2.70] to mail these bulgy envelopes to the U.S.: So far, I'm out AU$7.20 [US$5.40]. If they send me a third letter, I'm thinking of billing them for postage...


--GG