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Tag Archives: IRS

My Ongoing Obamacare Nightmare

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by ts4jc in About Me

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ACA, application, bureaucracy, bureaucrat, Federal Government, government, Health Insurance Exchange, income tax return, incompetence, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Medicaid, net income, New York State, nightmare, Obamacare, Obamacare nightmare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, privacy issues, proof of income, self-employed, self-employment income, Social Security Administration, Tax return (United States), United States, verification of income

Back in November, one of my clients asked for help with his Obamacare application.  Like me, he is both a New York resident and has self-employment income.  It would be a good learning experience for me, as I would be putting in my own application soon.  I found the New York health exchange easy to use, living up to the early reviews that it was far superior to the severely flawed Federal website.  It was very responsive each time we clicked on a link and soon we had a completed application except for the choice of plan.

A few weeks later in early December, I confidently ventured onto the same site for my own application.  Once again, entering personal data was quick and easy.  Then it came time to answer the income question: did I expect my 2014 income to be the same as in 2012?  And here was where the nightmare began.

When my client reached this question, he answered “yes”.  Apparently this government agency has access to your 2012 income tax return, but hey, no privacy concern there, right?  Anyway, that answer bypassed a number of additional steps and questions, as I was to find out.

My answer to this question was “no”.  While I did have a net loss of clients in 2013 (some related to my transition and some not) and some associated loss of income, the major reason for a decrease in income was that I had a project in 2011 for which I was able to charge about twenty times my usual average fee.  Three-quarters of my fee had been paid in 2012.  It is highly unlikely that this type of work will come my way again.

To be expected, I was taken to pages on the site to provide my estimated 2014 income.  Unexpectedly, this was where things started to fall apart.

First of all, it did not want to take my income as a self-employed individual.  I found I was only able to enter it if I said that I was an employee of my own company.  A further complication came because it was insisting that I provide data for my last three months of income and expenses.  As a tax preparer, providing my income and expenses for September-November would have vastly understated my net income.  There seemed to be no understanding that some people have seasonal businesses.

But the biggest problem of all was that the site kept timing out on me and returning me to an earlier screen.  I type rapidly and had all the information at my fingertips.  There was no significant delay in my data entry that should have caused this error.

Admitting defeat, I reluctantly called their help line number.  Soon, I was speaking to a capable agent who was more than willing to enter the information that I gave her.  In minutes, I felt vindicated.  She was getting the same time out problems.  Soon, we reached a point (about our fourth or fifth try), where she said that we would try it one more time and if it didn’t work she was going to call tech support.

For some reason, this time it worked.  It was like the Dilbert cartoon where the pointy-haired boss is telling Dilbert that he keeps clicking on a link and it doesn’t work.  Just as Dilbert starts to quote the line that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the boss clicks again and it works.

So now all the income and expense data is entered.  At this point, she tells me that we cannot proceed any further as they want verification of the financial information I just provided.  Thinking quickly, I ask her what will be acceptable as verification.  I know this might be a problem as my business income comes in the form of about 80 checks a year from almost the same number of individuals.  None of them are required to issue me a 1099.  And there is little reason for me to incur the cost of a separate business bank account, so I don’t have one.

She replies that this is outside of her area, but that in about 7-10 business days, I should receive an e-mail providing this information.  Unfortunately, I received no such e-mail and that time frame took me to December 23, the original deadline by which you had to have completed your application to be covered by January 1 (which they magnanimously extended one day).  There was no way I was getting through on the phone then.

So I called back between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  This time, I got an all too familiar government bureaucrat bozo.  When I asked what I could use as verification of my income and expenses, he replied to my amazement, “We don’t tell you what to send.”

Keep in mind that I worked for HUD for three years, a local housing authority for four years, and then was a stock broker for over twenty years which meant that my activities ultimately came under regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Federal Government (and I had to know those regulations to pass my licensing exam).  And for the past twenty-five years, I have dealt with the IRS, the NY State Department of Taxation and Finance, and New York’s counterparts in a few other states in my work as a paid tax preparer.  Finally, as part of my transition, I needed to know Social Security Administration and NY Department of Motor Vehicles verification requirements.  Never has there been a time when there were not clear regulations on what could be used as verification of statements made on an application.

Even so, I had no basis on which to argue with this agent.  So I am trying to figure out what I can use as verification.  Making a spreadsheet of my income and expenses would have been easy.  But I dismissed it as self-serving.  Anyone could type numbers and descriptions into Excel without a shred of truth in it.

What followed was Kafkaesque with a touch of Seinfeld plot line.  The results were as poor as could be expected under such circumstances.

There was only one way that came to mind as to how I could verify my income in 2013 as being less than in 2012: bank statements.  My bank statements for each year would show that the deposits in 2013 were less than in 2012 (by the differential I had stated in my application).  I was able to download monthly bank statements online from my bank account in a format that was acceptable for uploading to my Obamacare application.

However, there were three problems with this method.  The first was the amount of documents I would need to send.  My bank’s website did not provide a filter so I could retrieve only the deposits.  So I had to upload the entire bank statement.  Twenty-four months’ worth of bank statements at three pages each would mean a lot of pages for some bureaucrat to review.

The second problem was directly related to my transition.  Knowing who I might be dealing with, I wanted to make it as foolproof as possible.  The name on the account in 2012 did not match the name in 2013.  I could not count on the reviewer noting that the account number did not change.  So I uploaded a cover letter with an explanation and also uploaded my name change documents.  Now some reviewer has an awful lot of information about me.  I could just see him or her calling over another reviewer: “Get a load of this person’s application!”

Finally, there is the fact that deposits show income but not expenses.  And while 99% of my deposits are business-related, many of the expenses are for personal items.  I explained that the expenses are independent of income and are basically the same from year to year.  Since the expenses are approximately the same in 2013 as in 2012 (which information they already had), the deposit differential is essentially the same as my decrease in net income.

I was able to upload all this in the first week of January.  And then I waited, and waited and waited some more for the great State of New York to reply.

Knowing I would be getting much busier over the next two and a half months, I called back at the end of January.  I figured that four weeks was enough time to expect my information to have been reviewed.  This time, the person on the other end of the phone was very competent in her job.

She noted the large number of documents that I had uploaded and said it would take a few minutes before they would all be available.  While we waited, I was able to ask her a few questions about Medicaid and how it worked.  Finally, she told me that she was able to see on her screen that they were in the process of reviewing my documents, which means they should be finished soon.

And soon they were: the documentation I supplied was not considered sufficient proof of my self-employment income.  When I received a hard copy of this notice, it came with a document that set forth all the acceptable means of verifying any statement you might make on your application: the very information I was unable to receive a month earlier.  They wanted more hard proof, not just my statement that expenses were unchanged.

So I did something that I hadn’t done for at least 30 years (since becoming self-employed made my tax return more complicated), if ever.  I was preparing my own tax return at the beginning of February instead of working on my clients’ returns.  And as soon as I learned that my e-filed return had been accepted by the IRS, on February 11, I submitted my entire, five page, 2013 Federal Income Tax return as my most up to date proof of my income and expenses.  And I sent a copy of the proof that my e-filed return had been accepted).

I went back to the waiting game.  Around March 18, I called.  It was another trip to Bozoland.  First, he told me that they hadn’t even started reviewing my latest submission.  Okay, there’s nothing he could do about that.  But then he made the most ridiculous statement.  I mentioned the irony that I would have qualified for Medicaid using the income on my 2012 return.  (I was told this by the competent agent on my previous call.)  His response?  He actually told me that you don’t apply for Medicaid through the website that I was calling about!  Since the client I had helped months earlier had his Medicaid benefit card by now, I knew this was patently absurd.

By the time April 15 came and went, I still had not heard anything.  As it turned out, my health care nightmare was only beginning.

Praise God that for those of us who are in Christ, we are only sojourners here and we have a better country to look forward to.

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. – Revelation 22:1-2

God bless,

Lois

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Lois Update – January 2014

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, General Christian issues, General Transsexual issues, Just for Fun

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April 15, Bible Study, brothers and sisters in Christ, Christian church, Christian walk, Christmas Cards, Church membership, clients, cold weather, coming out, fruit of the Spirit, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, January freeze, joy, pastor, Tax law, Tax preparation, Tax return, tax season, Transsexual, winter, Worship Service

Right now, I am ramping up toward tax season.  It is like preparing for a two and a half month campaign.  You know things will get busy and then busier and busier.  Meanwhile, you also want to keep up some semblance of a normal life.  One still has to eat, and convenience foods become more and more of a priority.  I have already stocked up on some of them.  The fewer dishes it requires to be washed, the better.  But then again, it probably means more packaging to throw away or recycle.  So it is a matter of finding a balance: whatever saves the most time without making you fear for your health from all that convenience food.

This also means I need to go shopping once in a while.  And in a pinch, there is always Subway.  And while I am out, I’d better stop by the bank.  I can withdraw extra cash at the supermarket, but it won’t do much good to get paid by my clients if I don’t deposit their checks from time to time.

Of course there is also grooming.  I am meeting with clients, after all, and I take much more pride in my appearance now.  No matter how much I knew it was important for business, I found it hard to really care what that guy looked like.  I care about how I look.

I also have to make sure I don’t lose track of paying bills.  It would be disastrous for business to have electricity, phone or Internet turned off.

Church on Sunday is a priority until I get so snowed under with returns that I have to skip it and trust that the Lord understands.  Last year I missed church on the last two Sundays in tax season.  I also completed 41 tax returns and filed 10 extensions from April 1-15.  I am a one person office, so I can’t put some of the workload on anyone else.  Here is how I describe completing 41 tax returns in 15 days: it is like taking 41 college final exams and you have to get 100% on each one to pass the course.

Getting back to church for a moment, I also do my best to attend the Ladies Bible Study once a week.  One or two of the topics will be covered after tax season ends.  But most occur during tax season.  However, I have gone through too much in my life to reach the point where I can attend the Ladies Bible Study.  Now that I can, I want to take as much advantage of that privilege as possible.  More on that in a moment.

Sleep is a luxury, but sometimes nodding off in front of the computer or collapsing into bed half aware of my surroundings is a necessity.  I try to get four hours of sleep a night whether I need it or not.  If I have counted correctly, this is my 25th tax season.  The system has worked so far.  (I can sleep in almost any position, though sometimes I end up with a stiff neck.)

So far, two clients have scheduled appointments, I am expecting information in the mail from two clients, and two clients have started sending me information by e-mail.  And I have been in preliminary communication with a couple of other clients in terms of what they need to send me.

This year should be a breeze compared to last year.  That was probably the most nightmarish tax season I have ever experienced.  First, Congress didn’t pass the new tax law bill until New Year’s Day, even though many of the provisions were retroactive to 2012.  This meant that the IRS was delayed in programming their computers and the providers of my tax software had to work on programming that normally should have been done months earlier.  Furthermore, the IRS made my provider change a perfectly good software platform.  So for much of the tax season, the software wasn’t a tool, it was an adventure.

Finally, there was the reality of my transition.  Many of us transition with an employer.  It is pretty much all or nothing.  Either the employer is supportive and smooths the way with the rest of the staff or they are a problem.  I had about 75 clients (representing 90-100 returns) to come out to.  I had the opportunity to come out to a few of them in person, trying to cover those people who represent the most of my returns.  With the rest (about 60), I had to send out a mailing.  I received an immediate positive response from about a dozen.  Then I got a few of negatives, two very harsh.  Then I agonized over when I would hear from the rest.  The vast majority came back, but there were a couple of glitches along the way that needed to be ironed out.

This year, I know where I stand with everyone.  It will be back to the normal level of anxiety, which only occurs with one or two clients each year who get in touch later than usual.

January also brings the end of the Christmas season.  That was also unusual this year because I was focused on contacting clients in December 2012 and my Christmas cards to non-clients only went out a few days before Christmas.  Therefore, I had four people who received my card after they sent me their card to my old name.  None of them contacted me during the year.

A funny thing happened.  Two of those four were identical twin brothers who were my classmates at Cornell.  One kept me on their list and the other did not.  I suspect that the decision-maker was the wives, not them.  Some years ago, I was in a training meeting of a men’s group and the question was asked, “How many of you are in charge of sending out the greeting cards in your family?”  Out of about a hundred in attendance, I was one of only two who raised a hand … and I was single.

I also did not hear from the other two.  One was expected, but the other was a disappointment.

At the beginning of January, we had a cold spell in the NYC metro area, and they said it was the coldest winter weather in 20 years.  Then it warmed up and the usual pattern means that the worst of the cold weather was over for the winter. You might get a very cold day here or there even into early spring, but the temperatures would bounce back quickly.  Not this year.  We are finishing January with a stretch of at least 10 days where the temperatures are staying below freezing all day.  I don’t mind cold weather, and I find it easier to adapt to than the hazy, hot, humid weather we get in the summer.  But enough already!

I am saving the most important news for last.  Two weeks ago, I had a meeting with the pastors of my church (husband and wife).  It was my coming out to them.  This is the second set of pastors I came out to at this church, and I only started attending there in November 2012.  And the first time, a church officer paved the way for me.  This time, I had to go in cold.

It could not have gone better.  They listened patiently.  (You may have noticed that I can go on and on at times.)  When I did the reveal, they were respectful.  They were supportive.  They indicated to me that my Christian walk and my spiritual fruit were the most important part of who I am.  They admitted that they don’t know everything the Bible has to say related to the topic of transsexuality (I gave them the link to my blog, and I hope they will be reading), but they could see merit in the points I was able to make in one 90+ minute meeting.  They promised that my information would be kept in the strictest confidence, and I trust they will keep their word.

Best of all: I am still welcome at Sunday morning service; I am still on the committee for which I volunteered (community outreach); I can keep coming to Ladies Bible Study!  Furthermore, they have agreed that I can become a member, and hopefully we will be talking about the process of that in the near future.  A course is involved, so it may need to wait until after tax season, depending on the nature and length of the course.

It was days before I stopped smiling after the end of that meeting, even when I would cry tears of joy as well.  God is so good and He has blessed me more than I can say and more than I deserve.  I love Him so much.  And in the situations when God’s blessings came through His people, I love them very much also.

It’s interesting.  It is understandable that we pray for things to go well in our lives and in the lives of people we care about.  But it is during those difficult times that we have the opportunity to see how much the Lord cares for us, and which people are truly there for us in one way or another, to the best they can do in view of their own circumstances.  These are my Christian brothers and sisters: my most important family.  Like any family, sometimes we fuss and squabble.  But I can never thank God enough for saving me and making me a part of this family.  And I understand it far more than I ever did before.

God bless,

Lois

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