IRS tax correction notice problem

If you did not use the LSE procedure and worksheets, would that result equal the IRS result?

If so I would try to call them at the number in the notice.

With luck just speaking to someone there and noting you elected LSE and apparently the IRS had not noticed this, will be all you need to do to get them to correct this.

If you can't reach a knowledgeable person at their contact number, write a reply and attach the notice and also a copy of the worksheets for each year. You must use the worksheets for all involved years. send all this to the address on the notice.

In your reply state you received their notice and you do not agree with their calculations because you used the LSE procedure to calculate tax based on yearly social security income, and they did not.

Advise them your calcualtions used LSE and that you have attached the worksheets for each year and to notify you that they agree with your calculations and have closed this issue.

They might never reply, but hopefully thy will close the issue.

The amount of taxable SS benefits, when it is not a simple RRB payment over its normal schedule (but includes things such as multi-year payments, or repayments of excess back to SSA) is something that the IRS ALWAYS SEEMS TO SCREW UP.

Your explanation was adequate - write it up and send it in.

Thank you for your responses. When I used the $51,000 as base to recalculate the taxable benefits (without using the LSR mehtod), I came up with the amount that they indicated within 5 dollars. It looks that somehow they didn't note the "LSE" that I wrote on the left of line 20a. I'll contact them by phone and hope to resolve this by phone. We are concerned that if we contest the amount, they may start looking at other areas to find errors and ask for documents that are not related to the SS benefits in question. Although I am sure that other areas are accurate and we can provdie all the documents, the process may become very stressful since we are stressed as is now. What is your thought on this? Thank you again for your help.

Sounds like you understand completely. Nothing we can do about the stress or mess created by te IRS, but try to work through it. If you used a paid prefesional preparer, you might have been able to turn over dealing with the IRS to them, but at this point, you seem to understand what to do quite well.

Thank you for the addtional advice.

Just returned from tax seminar and when this subject was discussed, our speaker noted that very often IRS just glosses over the LSE written on the line when their clerks input the numbers from the returns. So it tends to be a recurring problem, and you are not alone.

ChEAr$, Harlan Lunsford, EA n LA

If the return had been e-filed, no IRS clerk and no hand-written entry on a dotted line would have interfered with proper reporting, if I surmise correctly.

-Mark Bole