IRS Refund Demand Letter
Tired of waiting
I’m sending this letter to the IRS later today…
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To:
IRS Refunds Department
Internal Revenue Service
Stop 5501
P.O. Box 149338
Austin, TX 78714-9338
From:
WILLIAM & JULIE K HOUSLEY
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I’m sending you this letter to remind you that you still owe me a $9,883 refund for 2025, which I filed for electronically clear back at the beginning of March through TurboTax.
At the end of April, seven weeks later, you sent me an IRS Notice CP63, correctly pointing out that I had not yet filed for the year 2024. In the notice, you incorrectly assumed that I owed money for that year. I hadn’t filed because it was my understanding that the IRS doesn’t require you to file if it is a refund return, and I’d calculated the 2024 return amount to be so small that I didn’t care about it either. The CP63 was rather aggressively worded and threatened to withhold “certain exemptions, deductions, or credits” that I am owed for the 2025 tax year. Does that mean that you intended to process it under 2024 rules because I hadn’t filed a 2024 return?!?
Anyway, the letter set a deadline of May 7th to file the 2024 tax return and mail it to Austin, TX. I met that deadline by mailing the return via overnight express mail on May 2nd.
Now, I sit here on June 2nd, fourteen weeks after filing my 2025 tax return ELECTRONICALLY, and my refund is still being held, and the IRS.gov website still shows that you haven’t received the 2024 return that I mailed four weeks ago. I think that you have received it and it’s in a pile on someone’s desk somewhere.
I have a bill from Intuit for their services in helping me with my 2025 tax return, which is now three months late. If I were three months late paying money I owed you, you would charge me interest, fines, interest on the fines, and interest on the interest on the fines. Even if I did owe you money for 2024, the 2025 tax return refund is for nearly $10,000! It includes the automatic 30% withholding from the severance pay I received after being laid off from work, and I still have debts I accumulated during that layoff that I am paying interest on. Any estimate your team made of my 2024 taxes would have been, at most, four-digits wide. So, you have frozen five-digits of HARDSHIP MONEY for three months over the possibility of collecting four-digits of taxes owed.
Now, to answer the question in your mind. Why, if I owe you no money (so far as I am aware), have I enclosed a check for $10 in this letter and marked “Payment Enclosed” on the outside of the envelope? Well, I figured that if you want money so bad that you’ll hold a five-digit return for the possibility of four-digits of owed taxes, then you probably open a payment immediately, and might even need to call me on the phone to get my social security number so that you can know where to credit the payment, allowing me to further vent my frustration in person. If you are reading this letter anytime in the first two weeks of June, then my trick worked.
Oh, and I also want this $10 back.
Respectfully,
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William A. Housley