Normally, my mailbox subsists on a slim diet of marketing material like the Clipper Magazine, hawking local restaurants, pitting Pella versus Andersen for my window business, and encouraging me to purchase a massive playset by showing a diverse group of happy children poorly photoshopped onto every available inch of tobacco-stained wood. I like it that way very much; I find that most serious post that lands in the communal metal structure at the base of our townhouse complex’s drive bodes ill. Long gone are the days of letters or even cards alighting there; bills (those I don’t yet receive electronically) abound.
The USPS now sends me an email every morning to alert me to all the junk that I can expect that day, complete with photos of said miscellanea. So, the other day when I opened their missive and saw the image of a letter with an IRS return address, my heart skipped a beat – and not in the springtime and I’m in love kind of way. Fortunately, our friendly letter carrier arrives early in the day, so I strode out into that spring sunshine determined to face the foe bravely. The letter, number 5071C for those interested in gory detail, which begged the question, “do they actually generate 5,070 other form letters? Not to mention subsets of those delineated by letter?” informed me that unless I could verify my identity, my recently submitted Form 1040 would simply spontaneously combust into the ether. Or some such horrid fate.
I know who I am, I thought; I am secure in my identity. Why does the IRS doubt me? I sent a photo of the letter to my accountant fearing a scam, but he verified its validity suggested that I verify myself to them. He sent me the relevant information from the return that I’d need to do so on the IRS’s convenient and easy-to-use website, www.identify.irs.gov. A cinch, I thought. A few moments on my iPhone and I could shred the letter like I’d shredded the bulky paper returns I’d saved for years (with said accountant’s permission). Out of an abundance of caution, he cleverly encoded the last four digits of the account to which the IRS would wire the refund, showing only the first and fourth numbers; asterisks stood in for the center two.
I created an IRS website account, and carefully entered all the required information, smugly expecting to conclude this nasty business in moments. But when I hit enter, the IRS said “we are unable to verify your identity online. Please call us at 800-830-5084 between 7 am and 7 pm M-F within 30 days of receipt of this letter, or…” well, you know, the ether.
I shared my woes with the accountant asked him why the IRS would have such a crisis with my identity when I didn’t. He mentioned something about having triple checked all my information, including my checking account number… and therein lay the problem – at least with the site verification process. I directed the refund direct deposit to my savings account. Not my checking account. The first and fourth digits of both accounts, seemingly impossibly, are identical. The IRS system believed that since I didn’t know my own account number, I must be scamming them. If new accountant had said “checking account” anywhere in his email I’d have avoided the plunge into the hot lava of IRS telephone hell, but that magma had flowed under the bridge.
I steeled myself for mind-numbing, time consuming wait times to reach mind-numbingly brain-dead representatives who relish torturing unsuspecting (and in my case very innocent) taxpayers. That’s what my accountant told me to anticipate, anyway.
I called four times one day. After listening to the same 10-minute uninspired introduction (calling that number repeatedly will either cure insomnia or induce hypertension) each time, the robotic female voice informed me that people like me eager to find out who they were had so overwhelmed the system that I couldn’t even hold. Call back later. Another day. I felt like Dorothy at the gates of Oz. The Wizard couldn’t possibly see you now…but I sorely lacked her ever-so-helpful ruby slippers to rescue me from bureaucratic purgatory.
In between calls, the issue nagged at me like the pea in between the princess’s mattresses. What had I done to deserve this? I am as fervent a rule follower as they come. I never… but then it dawned on me. My previous accountant’s firm had been hacked, compromising personal data. Their seeming indifference to my social security number making its way around the dark web seemed not to faze them. That and the few material mistakes (not in my favor) on my return led to them becoming my ex-accountants. Toward the end of our relationship, over a year ago, they recommended that I request from the IRS a unique identity verification number which I’d use for all future filings so that some dark web troll couldn’t file in my name. I did so, and while I’ve received no less than four letters over the course of twelve months acknowledging my request, I have never received said secret code. Hence, this need to authenticate myself. The simple submission of the petition generated their need to confirm that I am me, and not a nefarious double. It’s down to their inefficiency, of course, that I don’t have the code yet. But I thought it best not to lead with that observation.
The next time I called Ms. Robata told me that someone indeed could speak with me that day, but that I could expect a thirty-minute wait. Phew! I was delighted that she didn’t say thirty hours. During that interval, while cringing at the truly horrible elevator music punctuated by the same Ms. Robata telling me how much the IRS cares about me and wants me to be happy and well-cared-for, I determined to practice radical compassion with whichever representative eventually picked up my call. They can’t enjoy this job. They probably earn very little and deal with annoyed, impatient jerks all day long. I would be nice and understanding and patient.
Finally, after only twenty minutes, Belinda picked up. “How can I help you?” she read from her script in a monotone in stark contrast to the perky Muzak. She didn’t really care, I feared. But I dug my heels into the mud of loving kindness from which lotus flowers blossom, and asked how she was, if she’d been vaccinated, and thanked her in advance for helping me. Her tone never brightened despite my fervent niceness. But she did, after a few stumbles, twists, and turns, help me.
“I can’t find you.” Oh boy – no identity, and now I don’t even exist, I thought. I had to repeat the whole story and the relevant letter number three times. “Sometimes they just generate these things in error,” she casually mentioned while she looked for any recent IRS notice of that possibility. I offered up my “control number” three times, but she declined it until, exasperated, she could not locate me or any correspondence saying this was all a horrible April Fool’s joke perpetrated on not April Fool’s Day. “Why don’t you give me your control number?” she ventured, like, as my ex-husband used to, it was entirely her own idea. “Oh, here you are! I’d entered your social security number wrong in one place.” She chuckled. I didn’t.
In a matter of moments, she located me and asked about six random questions – not including, as I expected (like the bridge keeper in Monty Python and the Holy Grail )“what is your favorite color?” I feared getting it wrong in my urgency to move past this blip, resulting in my ejection into that river of lava below. I passed with flying colors (pun intended) and she said “your identity has been verified and your return will be submitted (they do like the passive voice over there at the IRS). You can expect to receive your return within nine weeks, but if you don’t, here is another number you can call…” I asked for some kind of verification code, but she offered none up. I wanted proof.
I thanked her profusely, and I meant it. Belinda may have neither worked efficiently, nor shown enthusiasm for alleviating my predicament, but she did the job pleasantly and ultimately, thoroughly, and all of that in under an hour.
I took copious notes during the call and saved them in case the USPS previews another ominous IRS letter in my mailbox. I emailed my new accountant gleefully with the good news; he replied with cute hugging smiley face emojis. Apparently, an hour on the phone with IRS is tantamount to winning the CPA lottery. In the end, not only had I come away unscathed, but now I know I am who I say I am.
NB: I did receive another IRS note just a few days later. Thinking it would congratulate me on regaining my identity, I was disappointed to see yet another acknowledgement of my request for super-duper secret identity code – with no code, nor with an explanation for its delay.