Still Unstimulated

The Honorable Susan A. Davis
United States House of Representatives, CA District 53
4305 University Avenue
Suite 515
San Diego, CA 92105

Dear Ms. Davis,

Our income tax refund, when we get one, is made by direct deposit to our bank account. My Social Security is deposited monthly directly to our bank account. For reasons known only to the Internal Revenue Service, they decided that our “Economic Stimulus” payment needed to be made by means of paper check.

The IRS has advised me that it mailed a check to us in the amount of $1200 on either May 30th or June 2nd. Whether or not the check has been cashed is unclear, but if so it was not cashed by us as we never received the check.

Calling the number shown of the IRS website for that issue has yielded nothing other than a recording that the check was mailed on the earlier of the dates above, another recording that “due to heavy traffic” they were unable to handle my call, and wait times on hold of up to ninety minutes without my call being handled.

A call to the regular IRS service number yielded nothing more than a statement that this matter could be handled only by calling the number that had yielded nothing but recordings and long waits on hold without results.

I finally went to the IRS taxpayer assistance office in downtown San Diego, not an easy matter since I am partly disabled and no parking is available at that office. I was told that our check had been mailed on the latter of the dates above and that if I wished to file a claim I would need to wait upwards of two hours to be interviewed by an agent, a requirement that was beyond my physical capability.

Having exhausted the avenues available to me I am asking if you can assist us in this matter.

If you cannot help we might well be forced to simply write this $1200 off as another bogus government program that makes fraudulent claims about helping the taxpayer, which would be seriously unfortunate, as we could really use the money. Someone should know, however, that there is government money floating around that is either already stolen or is waiting to be stolen. The government may or may not care about that.

Sincerely,

William E. J. Heffner