Jason Dinesen

Jason Dinesen

On Posted on by Jason Dinesen to Editorial Commentary

The IRS Says I’m Not Authorized to Speak On My Own Behalf

IRS Notice 9-23-14Filed under “dumb but true things the IRS does.”

A few months ago, I received a letter from the IRS, in which the IRS disputed which payroll form my company should be filing. Without going into all the details, the short version is: I think I’m supposed to file a Form 941; the IRS thinks it should be a Form 944.

In August, I wrote a letter to the IRS, asking them to please update their records to show that I am to use Form 941 as my reporting form.

Last week, I got the following letter back from the IRS.

This is in response to the inquiry of August 12, 2014, from your accountant. We have no record that you authorized him to act for you in this matter. Please notify him that we have replied directly to you. If you wish to authorize a third party to represent you, please complete Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative.

Where to even begin?

The first page of the letter is attached as an image to this blog post. As you can see, after the IRS tells me that I am not authorized to speak on my own behalf, they go into excruciating detail about the history of payroll forms. The rambling details continue onto a second page.

Here are the thing that stand out to me:

  • A human at the IRS must have looked at the letter I sent in August. This human then made a conscious decision to send me this letter in response. How could this human not make the connection between my company and me? I even signed the letter as “President, Dinesen Tax & Accounting, P.C.”
  • Once the mind-numbing detail of the history of payroll forms is over, the letter apologizes to me for any inconvenience the IRS may have caused, and then the best part of all….
  • The IRS says they are sending a copy of the letter to my authorized representative — meaning, a second copy of the letter was included in the mailing I received.

So to recap:

  1. The IRS says I am not my own authorized representative so they can’t make the changes I requested
  2. The IRS sent me a duplicate copy of their letter because I am my authorized representative

Or at least, this is my interpretation of things.

This isn’t 850 days of incompetence like with the identity theft saga I helped a client deal with, but it’s awfully crazy.

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