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An IRS Situation-Now What?

#1
While on a mid-week visit to Michigan’s Leelenau Peninsula my wife and I received a frantic call from our son. The emergency? He had signed for not one, but two certified letters from the IRS.
 
Upon cutting short our break and arriving home and opening the letters we found they were identical (why send one when you can send two) notifying us we were delinquent in a matter related to our disputed 2015 return, and owed significant penalties and interest, blah, blah, blah.
 
I really didn’t waste much time reading them because we had reluctantly settled the matter and paid the IRS in full some eight months ago and have the cashed checks to prove it.
 
Has anyone else had a similar experience they’d care to share? And does anyone have any suggestions as to how we should proceed?
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#2
If you regularly work with an accountant or enrolled agent, start there.
If not and the amount was minor and there is a contact on the letter, I would start with the contact.
Although I have not been in your situation, I have received duplicate letters. Am almost sure they had different contacts on them.
Am hoping someone with more experience than I answers this.
Have been what I call spot audited between 5 and 10 times for all sorts of things - I try to stay prepared.
 
Not in answer to your question but regarding spot audits -
I went over Mitt Romney's tax return carefully and noticed that, when something appeared to be unusual, an explanation was offered. CPA who does a tax return for which I am a trustee does the same. All of the "wise ones" say to never offer explanation until asked and, to date, I haven't - am thinking I will the next time something is weird.
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#3
When I lived overseas for several years, my company had PriceWaterhouseCoopers do our tax returns.  They ALWAYS provided explanations (multiple supplementary tables in attachments to the tax return) to explain where otherwise unsupported numbers came from. 
 
When I do our taxes myself now, I have been over-riding the tax software because of an unusual circumstance (which will continue for a couple more years).  I include an attachment in tabular from clearly and concisely explaining what I have done. So far, so good.
 
I only had them once question two things (where I had not previously provided an attached explanation). They wanted to be sure that 529 earnings actually went toward education (I had the supporting documents) and that social-security over-withholding was in-deeds true (it was shown on the multiple W2s from two different affiliates of my company, but they asked anyway;  I also had a supporting letter from my company to show them).
 
When completing a tax return, I would err on the side of providing a clear explanation in an attachment in tabular form in order to head off any questions.  However, this will prevent electronic filing (which might be a good precaution due to identity theft?).
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#4
DUPLICATES are not unusual with one for you one for wife.

also its not unusual for errors and failure to review your response to audit.
 
In fact,hard to get IRS to focus on what you  send; they usually relay on what is sent by others such as broker accounts without much consideration for expenses or even your info on cost; stocks don't cost zero , zero cost basis is s common problem.
 
There are also fraudsters out there who are somehow able to figure out you had an issue with IRS.
 
You can ask for an audit reconsideration.
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#5
My recommendation is Do Not Panic.
If you believe the letters relate to a matter that you believe you did already settle then just make the contact with the IRS - they should provide a contact to discuss the matter. I don't see any issue here.
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#6
I was audited and went to the local IRS office and they were worthless helping me. About all they could say is we can help with Social Security, and we do not have access to the IRS tax/audit records, but they believed I was handling the situation right as their personal opinion. This was after I waited over an hour for the IRS person at the office to get done talking on the phone about his son's basketball game, while being leered at by the security guard who would come out of his office every 15 minutes to see if I was still there.

Calling the IRS with the number they provided was futile also, they ran you around a voicemail tree and a couple options I chose the system hung up on me after being on the phone for over an hour. The only way I got to talk to a real person was by punching random buttons on the phone instead of the options it gave you and after about 10 wrong tries it would route you to a live person at the IRS.
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