Happy 4th of July!
Jul. 4th, 2019 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeletsAs a true patriot, I spent a portion of the holiday writing a letter to the IRS. Over the last two years, this fine organization couldn't manage to transfer my prepaid money between two different tax forms. After multiple phone calls to their central office and assurances from their staff that it should not be a problem, nothing got done and last month they sent the case to a Revenue Officer.
So I talked to the officer and he explained the debacle to me by a "computer glitch." Listen to this: because the amount I paid on one form is greater than the amount I owe on another form, the computer cannot credit my account. A supervisor has to do it manually upon special request. In short, the IRS owes me money but because their system is screwed up they keep wasting my and their own time on a non-issue. It's really unpleasant to deal with the whole thing. Hopefully, the revenue officer can take care of it now.
One thing that scares me the most about a potential nationalized healthcare system is the low quality of American federal bureaucracy. If we could staff the system by bureaucrats from any northern European country, or from Singapore, or even from Japan, I'd be fine with the setup. But as it stands right now, US federal agencies I had to deal with over the decades of my life in the country don't inspire confidence at all.
Otherwise, we have a great country. Happy Independence Day!
So I talked to the officer and he explained the debacle to me by a "computer glitch." Listen to this: because the amount I paid on one form is greater than the amount I owe on another form, the computer cannot credit my account. A supervisor has to do it manually upon special request. In short, the IRS owes me money but because their system is screwed up they keep wasting my and their own time on a non-issue. It's really unpleasant to deal with the whole thing. Hopefully, the revenue officer can take care of it now.
One thing that scares me the most about a potential nationalized healthcare system is the low quality of American federal bureaucracy. If we could staff the system by bureaucrats from any northern European country, or from Singapore, or even from Japan, I'd be fine with the setup. But as it stands right now, US federal agencies I had to deal with over the decades of my life in the country don't inspire confidence at all.
Otherwise, we have a great country. Happy Independence Day!
