The I.R.S. Reminds Me that I Neglected to Pay My Taxes

I got three letters from the IRS today — the first I’d heard from them since .

Back then, they were sending me notices of “intent to levy” but they seem to have had some reluctance to transform their intentions into action, since no levies were forthcoming.

The latest batch of letters is even tamer. They’re just “Reminder of overdue taxes” letters for , , and (in I didn’t make enough money to owe taxes). They’re mostly notable for the improvement in their layout. The letters have a section with a chart that shows how the interest charges have accumulated during different spans with different interest rates (the interest rates have vacillated some, with the trend declining from a high of 6% in to 3% ).

Tax YearThey think I owed*Subsequent interest and penaltiesTotalSeizedOutstanding
13,7081,65715,3656,0729,292
* may include an initial late payment penalty
$784$255$1,039$1,039 $0
4,170 559 4,729 4,729 0
3,695 633 4,328 3044,023
0 0 0 0 0
1,203 87 1,290 01,290
3,856 123 3,979 03,979

To this you can add another $4,000 or so for , but they don’t know about that yet. That may explain their lack of attention, as my $9,292 outstanding balance is below what I understand to be the threshold at which the IRS feels moved to take action these days.

It wouldn’t be the IRS if they didn’t screw up something, and I notice that their software failed to correctly credit me for the partial seizure in in their page one total (though it does show up in the course of the itemized interest calculations on page two).