Thank goodness for my accountant—who lives there.
This began somewhere prior to the reign of Queen Victoria. Writers’ income has always been called royalty. When people began drilling oil wells in this country, in 1859, and people began paying money for what came out of the ground, some genius thought they would call it royalties. Well—nice of them. Now the US tax structure calls that royalty, but does NOT call a writer’s income royalties, though that was the original word for it—a source of confusion and bewilderment ever since. I know this. The State of Oklahoma has always known this—at least—its upper echelons do. Thank goodness.
Apparently somebody in the Oklahoma Tax Commission offices thought they had a major case of someone ducking paying Oklahoma tax on oil by not declaring ‘royalties’ that appeared in old 1099’s in the ‘right’ blank for oil income in the income tax forms. Well, the fact that the ‘royalties’ emanate from New York state should have told them something, for starters. The fact that they’re all from book publishers and that the income is (elsewhere on the tax form) accounted for as income from writing should have told them something.
Nope, not from oil at all, at all. But they thought I’d been non-reporting for a long, long time. And now they’re going to have to track all the way back through this swamp of paperwork and figure out that, yep, publishers don’t produce oil. And the taxes were all paid long, long ago. Sigh. Meanwhile I get 5 offers a day from these various companies that want to lend me money, solve my ‘tax problem’ for pennies on the dollar, and otherwise settle the matter. Makes you have this dark little thought that if they can get that tax debt down to 10 cents on the dollar, d’ you s’pose they could do it retroactively and get me all the tax back that I did pay? Noooooooooo, I don’t think so.
Well good they’ve figured it out! We recently had to pay a lot of money to hold on to a house we own outright because (a) we made a mistake when Russ was desperately looking for a job and right before he went to New York and (b) they put the house up on a tax debt sale without ever giving us warning. Because it went for a few years, they managed ot build up quite a debt we had to pay off.
It’s settled, but we’re still scrambling to recover from that one.
It’s good that the mystery is solved and I hope you get the all-clear from Oklahoma and your accountant there very soon.
Have you been mining asteroid belts again and not paying the Company? *Tsk, tsk*
Hooray! I hope this means an end to this hassle very soon. Um, I don’t suppose Oklahoma plans to reimburse you and your accountant for the time spent on this nonsense, swear to improve their employees’ training, and/or apologize?
Of course they won’t. It’ll cost me the equivalent of two weeks’ work to pay my accountant for the sort-out. And then I’ll have to sort out our credit rating. And meanwhile I’ve got all these tax-fix-it companies flooding my mailbox. Not to mention lost sleep and stress and it’s thrown me behind on all my accounting to the state government I AM responsible to. I have got a real mess in the office, because Jane’s been sick for a month and everything ground to a halt, plus our disordering the filing system digging into old files, trying to run this down while trying to find Jane’s medical records and find forms and rule books for our insurance—the office looks like a disaster zone and unanswered mail is stacked half a foot high, and another stack of folders and loose papers that have to go back into the filing system.
This sounds like a royal pain in the you-know-what from the get-go. What I *love* is the way these offices act like their mistakes are your fault. Glad it was solved fairly expediently, but *of course* you are going to pay for their mistakes! (grrrrrr)
I’ve had some real go-rounds with both state and federal offices. I can feel my blood starting to boil even as I write this. Best leave it alone.
“Royalties.” Thinking you were getting oil royalties instead of author/artist royalties. I bet they said it was from their automated computerized system, too, and not the thoughtless person who needed a better education or imagination, and likely both.
I know it won’t make you feel any better, for which, I’m sorry, but it will be about six to twelve months after the matter is officially resolved to the state’s satisfaction, before those tax-fix-it companies quit mailing you. It could be longer than that, in that they still will fish for suckers, I mean, business. Either rip up those fix-it notices or call/write them to tell them the matter’s been resolved and make them remove you from their mailing list.
Late last year, some congressman somewhere (federal? some state?) had the bright idea to introduce a bill allowing one to be imprisoned for debts. It made the national/world news, but I haven’t heard since what happened. One hopes everyone had a good laugh and let the bill die. It would seem that congressman wasn’t paying attention in history or government classes, the day they covered “debtor’s prisons” among one of the objections raised when the American Colonies revolted, declared independence, and set up that quaint old document known as the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments.
I do hope no one decides to pass such a measure, or at least 25% of the population would be imprisoned for debts carried. Or perhaps that lovely indentured servitude or slavery would be nice. Aha, I know, just throw everyone in jail. That’ll be convenient.
On a related note, it seems there was also an open, public letter from a school superintendent in Michigan pointing out that the state prison system provides better and is better funded for prisoners than the public school system is for students. The superintendent wrote the letter asking for the governor to make his school a prison, so they might have better funding and services for the kids. A rather modes proposal, perhaps.
Well, instead of a rant to raise your blood pressure and mine, I hope you found some preposterous gallows humor in my post. But dang, it’s getting to where it’s difficult to write parody and satire, when the real news events are so filled with hyperbole and absurdity.
Grumble, growl, grouch, rant…. What? No, has naught to do with getting less than five hours of sleep each of the past three or four nights. Or the joy I had the last few times I’ve dealt with taxes, insurance, or government bureaucrats.
@BlueCatShip: I wouldn’t worry much about that bill. It wouldn’t work in our debt-ridden society. The credit card companies would be falling all over themselves to block prosecution. Otherwise, consumers would abandon debt. And then where would our economy be‽ 😉
“To err is human… to really foul things up requires a computer.” One might add the corollary “or a government office!” Disclaimer: I DO work for the state government, although I hope in a relatively benign function.
Government officials, and especially tax officials, are really very talented people. Years ago I made a mistake on a tax form, failed to check mark a box, setting off round after round of calls and letters as I tried to find out how to fix it. At the height of this I received a letter from an official who very correctly quoted the date and subject matter of my last letter, to which this was a reply. Unfortunately she didn’t answer the questions I had raised, so I called rather than waste more time on letters. My call was passed back and forth for half an hour from desk to desk. The official I wanted was either on vacation or out to lunch; opinions varied. Finally I was handed over to her assistant, who said, sounding annoyed at having to explain so obvious a matter, that although her boss referenced the date and subject of my letter, she had not answered my questions because she never received this letter.
See how talented? She could answer letters she never received! Not everyone can do this!
(I clung to Rule #1 in dealing with tax people: Don’t make them mad, they know where you live, they know where your relatives live, don’t yell at them, don’t yell at them, don’t yell . . .)
It only took six to eight months to clear up the issue. It sounds as if yours will be settled sooner; I have my fingers crossed for you! Royalties from oil? Don’t you just wish?
Just hearing you talk about taxes and a mess in your office, etc., etc., made me shudder. Sounds like you need a Kelly Girl.
I needed one today when I had to straighten up a missing form 941 from last year, and the computer wouldn’t give me the right formulas since the tax law change. Sometimes the IRS seems to lose the 941’s. It’s possible we missed it in some crisis last year. However it is, first you have to get the 941 form of the proper year, and then you have to get the computer to cough up figures—but it wants to do them by the tax rate in 2011, and it was different in 2010. Sigh. I am NOT good at arithmetic. Astrophysics, orbital mechanics, I grok—but NOT arithmetic. I ended up with the computer claiming I’d paid the IRS 240.00 too much, and my figures say I paid what I owed. The good news is, we did pay it, I’m sure we owed it, and I’m now going to have to convince the IRS to keep the 240 and not send me a check, because if they do, they will be wanting it back as soon as they figure I’m right—which will usually take a couple of months and confuse me as to what the heck I’m doing getting a bill for 240.00. Sigh.
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!
A Kelly Girl? I just had a moment remembering the line, “Paint her greener!” from one of the 1970’s books about the making of the original Star Trek series. So, you hire a friendly Kelly green Orion slave girl (as opposed to a certain OSG nurse) and she solves the office mess, whereupon…okay, it was a nice idea, though. 😉 I cannot seem to convince my cats to do my office work, despite the awesome Cheryl Wheeler “Cat Accountant” song, for which I’ll try to find a YouTube link. She also has a fun song about the bank.
Well, I found her song, “My Cat’s Birthday,” but didn’t find a YouTube video for “Cat Accountant.” Both are on her CD, [i]Pointing at the Sun.” She’s very witty, if you haven’t had a chance to hear her songs before.
I had a minor run in with the HM Inspector of Taxes recently. In October they handed out corrections to a lot of people. For some reason even though I pay through PAYE (which is all dealt with by my employer) I got a £75 refund for ’08/09. Then in March they notified me that I’d underpaid by £50 in ’09/10. I was so incensed by the idiocy that I double checked the figures. Turns out I hadn’t been updating them about my private pension contributions which go up by 10% every year.
I ended up getting a couple of grand back and a code adjustment that means I’m better off each month. Amusingly it means the tax man has given me a better pay rise than my employer.
Sadly I ended up having to try and explain that to my boss and he’s American. It’s an odd arrangement – we work as an extension of a US based team but we’re employed by a UK subsiduary.
Lol! The Great American Sport is not baseball or football—it’s the savage filing of taxes on April 15. Astronauts in space have forgotten and had to get a special dispensation. Preparation for the Event begins on January 3rd, and continues with increasing fervor into April. On the Day, the post offices remain open at ungodly hours, with employees on the curbs to receive envelopes from lines of cars all anxious to get through that line by midnight.
It’s better now with the Short Form and the easy granting of extensions—but to get an extension, you’re still responsible for paying what you owe on the 15th. And if you haven’t figured your taxes by the 15th, you don’t know what you owe, so there you are, caught. If you’re late paying more, you get a daily-increasing penalty. Nobody wants a penalty.
I wish they’d just go over to a flat tax on gross income, but it’s such a national obsession, everyone’s convinced that there’s got to be a way to squeeze 10 more dollars out for their refund. I know people who’ll refigure the whole form again and again and again looking for ten dollars. And my own form, which is pretty cut-and-dried, is about 20 pages thick.
I’ve gone to e-filing. There’s an occasional year when the IRS needs an actual piece of paper with signature on it, but generally electronic works very well. You have to have it accepted by the IRS computers by the deadline and they issue you a tracking number but I don’t miss the deadly line at 1155pm outside the downtown post office on April 15th.
That’s how we think the IRS lost our 941’s. Jane swears we transmitted them, but they went into a black hole, apparently, whether our fault or theirs. They may have gone in with the PIN appropriate to another e-filing with the IRS. Sigh. Tech is wonderful … when it works.
About twelve years ago I hired an accountant when I found myself filling out too many forms for miniscule amounts of income. She is terrific about explaining everything, in fact insists that I understand what she is doing and why. The arithmetic is not the problem, figuring out what form etc. is…..and now RI has joined the modern world and state taxes can be filed electronically. It’s worth it for my peace of mind.
I seem to recall some years my parents filed everything but agricultural employees. I’m grateful for small things.
All this frustration and alarums and excursions. I can see exactly where Terry Gilliam got the plot for “Brazil.”
Most people in the UK are on PAYE – I think it’s compulsory in fact. That means no paper work which probably suits HM Tax at least as much as it suits us working stiffs :-/
Some people have to fill in a fairly short form if their affairs are more complex but not many. I’ll have to now since apparently the tax office is incapable or unwilling to just increase an amount by 10% every year. Even then it’s just one box to fill out. There’s just so little the average mug over here can claim for these days. They even scrapped mortgage payment relief a few years back.
But for an author I bet it’d be worse. You guys would be self employed and I dread to think what ‘them in charge’ would want to know 🙁
My current state, which has no income tax, but does have a tax on business activity, wants to know if I engage in logging or sell tobacco, and they lump writers into the same category as casino operations. The questions are insane.
My old state, which does have an income tax, but no tax on business activity, can’t tell a publisher from an oil well.
Then there are the federal taxes…because we’re a corporation, every month we have to deposit taxes, and every three months we have to report to tell them we’ve done that, and pay another tax that’s due quarterly—that one has an annual form. Employees and reports regarding employees are due on the calendar year, corporate operations are on a fiscal year, and you have to remember about the calendar year schedule. There are so many forms that large companies have people and whole offices who do nothing but full out forms, and the government has whole offices of people who read what the rather spendy computers kick out as anomalies and chase down people who forgot to file the paper that tells the government they filed the other papers.
If we went to a flat tax, we would probably unemploy a lot of people. But I do ask myself how much of our national productivity is centered around shifting paper and now electronic forms from one office to another, a process paid by the taxes we collect. Our state government, I hear, is shifting some of it (and some of our personal information, one fears) to Pakistan, and perhaps if Oklahoma had done so, someone in Pakistan would have known ‘royalties’ come from publishers as well as oil wells.
Don’t hold your breath on that last thought. Consider, for instance, how unhelpful help desks can be when they’re staffed by people living in Pakistan and India. They know English, understand English, but the cultural references just aren’t there.
The most helpful offshore people we’ve found are based in the Philippines.
TI’d rather go with an Indian call centre than a British one. At least the Indian ones seem to be effective and actually sound like they are interested. The British staff don’t seem to care and just want you off the phone as soon as possible. Either that or they’re more interested in selling you something rather than solving your problem.
As for taxes – yeah that sounds horrible. Still – you do have representation now 🙂