WHEN THE IRS WRITES…

I read!

Since Mom is incapacitated, I have taken over for her as power of attorney, which means that just about everywhere she needs her signature, I can legally sign for her. (As if you didn’t know this.)

All her mail is directed to my home now, and I pay her bills as I get them, I can do all her banking etc, a little more readily having everything come to me.

One day two weeks ago I got a letter from the IRS for Mom.

I had made out her taxes and here is this letter from the friendly folks from the IRS. It said: “Important: please open immediately”

I put the letter down on the desk and just look at it. I wonder what it is they want, I eye it cautiously as if it were a snake. Slowly I lift it up.

I pray: “Dear Lord” No sense in getting Him mad at me from the start.

“I promise to return all loose change when TLW (The Little Woman) sends me out to get a container of milk if this letter isn’t sending me to jail!”

I can’t imagine anything being wrong, but ignorance of the law is no defense.

I shakily open it and begin to read. Once again it is directed to Mom, asking her for the sake of verification of her identity to answer some questions by either a toll free number or the website they offer at the top of the page. It’s a Friday, I have an icebreaker to go to and I decide to put it off until Monday.

All weekend I fret about it, worry I did something stupid and now Mom will pay for it. If they send her to jail, they will have to provide 24/7 care, then I can release the live-in help we hired for her care. It’s starting to look good again in some odd way. I dismiss that thought and on Tuesday since Monday was a holiday, open the letter once more, get out her copy of her tax return and go online.

I think: “there is at least one question I can’t answer, I just know it, and I’ll have to go to their office with Mom’s tax-returns from going back to at least 1936, all of them and the receipts!

The questions are all easy, simple and direct, and I quickly finish them and they in turn say they can now process her returns. (Whew!)

Four days of worry for nothing!