You've Got Mail

Do you ever get all school girl giddy when you go to check the mailbox? Like ooohh what if today someone randomly decides to mail me a card or better yet a present? Well maybe I was once that girl, but not anymore my friends. That was before the days of bills, bills, bills and junk mail. Skye loves to check the mail. He gets all excited if anything comes with his name on it. Even if it’s a random coupon or some bullshit junk mail about filling out surveys for a living. He eats it up like candy. I try to remind him that is because most of the bills that come are addressed to me (or addressed to both of us with my name listed first), but no bueno. Then I insist on trying to burst his bubble by telling him that that a good chunk of our bills come via email – to my email since I’m the bill-payer on staff. He’s also a little federal offender who likes to open my mail if it seems “exciting”. I can assure you that I rarely get exciting mail – the occasional package will come, or a wedding invitation, but that’s about the extent of it.

You are probably thinking to yourself right now, why in the world is she blabbing on about snail mail – which is practically an extinct form of communication? Well that’s because I got an “interesting” little envelope in the mail a couple weeks ago. Skye brought it to me, like it was a prize. But it was thick and it was from the IRS. That's not my idea of a prize package! And I was scared to even open the damn thing! I guess I thought I would be put in jail immediately upon opening. For what, I couldn't tell you. I really only associate myself with the IRS one time a year, and that’s tax time. The letter proceeded to tell me that I owe them $200 some odd dollars from a discrepancy last year in my tax return. Really? I filed my taxes in February last year and you’re waiting until January to tell me this nonsense? Apparently, my return was audited. I looked it up online – because the Internet knows everything- and I found that only 1% of people who make under $250,000 a year have their returns audited. Lucky me! (I know you are probably shocked to learn that I’m not a quarter of a millionaire like you thought I was.)

Okay so no big deal right? I was audited and now I have to pay them what I owe…but wait there’s more. This so-called discrepancy, I’m not even sure it’s correct. It says I failed to claim some amount of income from some educational place that I’m not sure I even know what it is. What is that like student loans? Well trust me, I don’t get any income from my student loans – just lots of output on that front. I don’t even know if this is real or something I should be worried about…and it’s driving me nuts. I am preparing to file my taxes for this year now and I feel like this letter is holding impending doom over my head or something. So if you were me, and you were confused by all of these shenanigans – what would you do? Part of me wants to just go ahead and do what is asked of me. Part of me wants to attempt to get an actual person on the phone to confirm this, or get more information. I’ve never had any experience dealing with this so I’m not sure what I should do! Any accounting friends out there? Help me!