The USA’s tax code is wildly complicated, and that means that the sheer act of understanding exactly how much you owe for your business and personal tax takes a lot of work.
It’s administered by the Inland Revenue Service – who do their best to help with compliance, but have a reputation for being inefficient.
How inefficient?
Well – these pictures are of most of the 26 identical letters that arrived for me en-masse yesterday. They are all from the IRS, all posted from inside New Zealand via airmail and all ask for my latest address details.
The letters are truly identical – the letter number, dates, codes and so forth. The envelopes are the same but the stamps are stuck on with what seems to be a less than machine perfect process.
The fact that I received them indicates to me that those address details are just fine.
I last lived in the USA in 2001, and am not a US citizen.
Yeah, I’ve experienced the IRD’s specific brand of madness as well.
Over the course of the past week, I’ve recieved several different letters from them, all different, but all referring to the same thing – and they’re referring to something I did online so as to avoid paperwork!
26, that’s one for every fortnight in a year, or it could be a coincidence. Maybe it’s part of their administrations attempts at invigorating the economy? Millions of taxpayers times 26 letters about nothing means atleast one envelope company is making some money!
Maybe it’s a support system from IRD to the national post service.