IRS Follies, Part 2

Well, I have to take back everything I implied about the IRS a few days back, and add a “well done” for my credit union. It turns out that the problem was the tax guy put the wrong bank account number on our tax return. So the IRS advisory that they were “unable to locate” our account was valid.

I was thrown off by the fact that our state income tax refund was deposited, which is where kudos are due to our credit union. A lady there informed me that when no account is found for federal or state transactions they take the additional step of matching by Social Security number, and thus were able to credit our account for the state refund.

She agreed that a request for account verification might not receive that step, and that it might not even be accompanied by a SSN, but told me that the debit for our federal tax payment would have been processed based on SSN, even with the wrong account number. She checked and verified that no such debit had been presented.

So apparently, having been told the account was invalid, the IRS did not process the electronic payment. Can’t fault them for that, but the irony is that if they had been less thorough, had they merely processed the debit without first verifying the account, the tax payment would have been processed without any problem. Sigh.