The Glade 4.0

How to break this down to not be a long ramble....

Nevermind, I can't....

Noticed my direct deposit pay for this week was less than normal for a standard 40 hours. A few emails back and forth with my payroll dept. uncovered the fact that my salary was being garnished by the IRS.

WTF?

So several more calls later (IRS, State of PA, Local tax admin firm) I find out that not one of the above shows that I owe a thing, nor do any of the above have a levy against me.

A call back to my company's corporate office and I get the payroll person directly. She informs me that the levy is not against me, rather against Oonagh as her MAIDEN name from the local tax admin not the IRS. The 2010 Per Capita tax which usually amounts to no more than $16. Not only did they have her listed under her maiden name (Married almost 10 years, HELLO), they had her old address and her old phone number. Since they couldn't get a hold of her, they put 2 and 2 together, identified me as her spouse and with no notice, written, oral, or otherwise, decided to garnish my paycheck. Already, two garnishments have come out of my check ($56 and $68).

WTF?!

I call Local tax admin back and am relieved to be able to straighten out the mystery. Until the truth was revealed, I was genuinely concerned that this was somehow related to my past identity theft. I was literally shaking, I was so scared it was related. So being relieved of that, I focused on getting the infoz all straight with the tax ppls about my wife so this doesn't happen again. Additionally, I was at work and I was getting the evil eye from my boss and I had to get off the phone.

So, upon talking to Oonagh about it later, A couple of things came up that just don't line up:

-We currently have in our possession the 2011 Per Capita tax bill from the very same tax admin with Oonagh's CORRECT information (Name and address), and in our 10 married years we have never had the same problem from them. This bill has been paid each and every year we receive it. Apparantely, for 2010, they decided to send it to the wrong name and address.

-I received NO NOTICE WHATSOEVER that my pay was to be garnished. I mean seriously, if they had the resources to track me down as her spouse, couldn't they at least mail me a notice or give me a nasty phone call before going right to a garnishment. I would have settled up with them right then and there. I don't leave my debts unpaid.

Something stinks here and we are following up with the tax admin today. I now will settle for no less than full reimbursement of the late fees and penalties due to their mistake. I just can't see how what they did is right. They overstepped their bounds and We're going to get to the bottom of this.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Montco county sucks with this. I had my pay garnished for 50 in back taxes that I didn't owe because I lived and worked in Delco at the time. I called the office 3 times and faxed them paperwork twice when they mailed me my tax form (to my Delco residence). They said it would be taken care of and 4 years later out of the blue my boss tells me that my wage is being garnished....ohh boy. Was a while ago but seriously they have no clue what they are doing.

If theory doesn't teach that government is oppressive and ineffective real life experience should.

BTW local elections are coming up

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Get an attorney.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Considered that. But the reality came to me that I just don't have the time or money to invest in pursuing this as such.

I would be satisfied with a refund of penalties and interest.

All that being said, we do have CPA friend of the family who is willing to go to bat for us should we get stonewalled. So if we need to tap her for assistance and she can inform that we might have a case against them, we would certainly reconsider at that time.

Have to see how this develops.

I did the talking yesterday to all parties involved. Today, the local tax admin who dropped the ball on this is getting a dose of firey redhead.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Ya know I can introduce you to the Treasurer and Controller (who controls the Treasurer's budget).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'm far more frequently misbilled by corporations, banks, etc than Gov't.

Kindly requesting that any argument(s) that may ensue about how ineffectual the gov't may or may not be, please be brought elsewhere.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Called them today. Here is what I got. Paid in my married name in 2008,2009, and then in 2010, somehow the computer sent it to my maiden name at my parents address, and then righted itself in 2011 because I am holding the bill in my hand now. WTF? Really? I have to call the girl back again who told me I do not have duplicate accounts and that it is their error, but she of course does not have the authority to change the fact that we were charged penalties for their fault of sending it to the old address. Therefore, I will be calling them at 11:00 to speak to someone who can fix it. If not Lawyer time.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

That would be nice.

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"None is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe as they are the
ultimate guardians of their own liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"Yeah, I'm rehearsing my poker face. I don't handle stupid well. *sigh*" - Farsky

Sounds like promising progress. From what you are saying, It sounds like they are going to reimburse because they recognize the error. You just weren't talking to someone who had the authority to do that.

/fingers crossed.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

The endless mess that is anything to do with taxes in Pennsylvania (at any level) is why my mother moved to Delaware.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Wow, I didn't even know they could do that...garnish your wages with no due process or anything? They don't even have to TELL you they're doing it, let alone ask for permission?
That's messed up!

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Its a benefit to my move there as well. Berkheimer is the tax administrator for the area and they sent me a mystery "final notice" that I owed them money from 2005. If you refer to their own website they can only request info from 3 years past. I contacted my old bank when I saw a returned check fee and my bank confirmed payment of the check and showed no returned funds from Berkheimer.

So I told them to take a sugar frosted @!*" off the end of my ****. They need to fix their damn records. This will be the last year for dealing with any sort of payment to PA. I'm having an accountant deal with figuring out who gets what with living part in one state then moving.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Sounds like a great place to be a tax accountant!

So this is local taxes? Not sure how it works in PA, they actually send you a bill for local taxes? Here they just deduct from your pay just like they do for other taxes and there are reciprocity agreements between the municipalities so if you work in one area but live in another they get their money. PA sounds more complicated.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

They deduct but they can't figure **** out locally. Never had any problems with the state - just local.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

And when I moved into PA, no one explained the whole local tax thing. We didn't have a separate company handling the taxes when I lived in VA. (I found about it months later in passing from a coworker. "WTF is Berkheimer???") Basically, I have pretty low property taxes, but the township AND the school district levy earned income taxes (1/2% each in my case). I'm ok with that, actually. It means those who rent are also contributing, instead of just hitting the property owners.

At one point, if you worked in a different municipality than you lived, you'd get the local taxes withheld at the rate for where you worked. That municipality would transfer the funds to the one where you lived. If the place you lived had a different rate, then you had to pay the shortfall, or get a refund at the end of the year. If your tax didn't get withheld (or you had the shortfall mentioned above), you had to pay the rest quarterly. Now there's this Act 32 thing that will supposedly make you pay the higher amount right off the bat, starting in January.

Of course, now I work in NJ, so none of my local tax gets withheld. I have to pay quarterly.

Problems I've had:

Their old forms didn't accomodate moving between areas that charged different rates, or for which you had all withheld vs. part withheld. I got to make a spreadsheet to calculate it all and send that in as documentation. They later revised the forms to make them a little better.

and

Their current online annual return can't correctly calculate the tax owed if you work in NJ. They tell you to use one value for calculating the tax, but the form pulls from a different box on the W-2. You can't get it to pull from the other. I went around and around with their customer support before just filing out my return by hand and mailing it in.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?