Chain Mail

Let's get this out of the way up front: today's post is about venting and being pissed off. There won't be anything particularly valuable to learn, and whatever occasional laughs may occur will be the kind that you wouldn't want to hear in the dark. Think Joaquin Phoenix's upcoming version of "The Joker."

We already weren't having a great day. There was a regularly scheduled doctor's check-up, and at a certain age such check-ups are really about determining whether you're dying quickly or slowly (still slowly in our own case). The conversations go like this:

Patient: I have this symptom.
Doctor: We can't do much about that but it probably won't kill you.
Patient: I also have this symptom.
Doctor: We can't do much about that but it probably won't kill you.
Patient: I also have this symptom.
Doctor: (Long, thoughtful pause) You should see a specialist.

We spoke to the doctor about our year-long affliction with Stilton's Palsy (spastic shaking and jerking at night, and occasionally during the day when encountering stress) and mutually determined that medical options are pretty much at an end, so it will just be an embarrassingly kinetic part of our existence from now on, and a good reason to stay out of expensive china stores. But that's not what pissed us off.

Listening to the news on the way home from the medical visit, we heard all the stories in which Democrats are now claiming that the country is in a "Constitutional Crisis" because Attorney General Barr has been declared to be in "contempt of congress" for not breaking federal law when they ordered him to. Seriously, Barr has already released every iota of the stupid Mueller report which the law (created by Congress) allows, but the Dems and their media fluffers are screaming "high crimes and misdemeanors!" Which, and we can't emphasize this strongly enough, is no reason to line them all up against a wall without benefit of a fair, if exceedingly brief, trial. But that's not what pissed us off today, either.

No, the final straw was delivered by the US Mail (a subsidiary of Amazon.com) - a letter from the IRS explaining that we were invited to be guest of honor at a massive ass-raping.

Had we underpaid our taxes? Nope - not by a penny! Had we ignored our taxes entirely like Al Sharpton and countless others who run up millions in tax debt with no one giving a good goddamn? Nope - we'd never missed a payment. But apparently we had run afoul of (warning: cover the children's ears, and STOP READING NOW if you have a heart condition!) the infamous 5500 form.

What's that? You never heard of the 5500 form? Well that's because the IRS does their best to keep anyone from hearing about it. Essentially, the 5500 form is for schmucks like us who have created our own retirement plans to avoid leeching off the taxpayers (as well as not trusting the government to be able to pay back all the money we've paid into Social Security).

Once a year, we have to fill out the 5500 form to show how much money was in our retirement account at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. That's it. A basic information form. Simple, right?

Of course, you don't file it with your regular taxes - because THAT would be too easy to remember. No, you file it "no later than the last day of the seventh month following the end of your selected fiscal year." And does the IRS send you the 5500 form to fill out? No, they do not - nor do they send a reminder. So do you print out the 5500 form online and send it? Don't be stupid! You can print it out, but it won't be accepted unless it's been printed on official IRS magic paper™which requires you to contact the IRS by phone and, after an interminable wait, request that they send you the form to fill out. And until recently, you also had to request a separate form that goes in the same envelope as the form 5500 and says, with God as our witness, that "the other piece of paper in this envelope is a form 5500."

Okay, got it? Well, there was some personal turmoil going on in our life around the last day of the seventh month following the end of our personally selected fiscal year and we apparently forgot to send the form in. As tax time (early 2018) approached, we couldn't find proof that we'd mailed in the 2017 5500 form the previous July, so got a blank form, filled it out in about 60 seconds, and sent it in.

The IRS, appreciative of this non-Sharpton-like behavior, then sent us a letter today saying that the fine for being late in sending this purely informational form will be $5,300.

Again, that's not for missing any tax payments, engaging in fraud, or hiding anything. It's basically $1000 a month for the boring nearly-secret form being a bit late.

That fine is actually more than our entire earned income from last year, which the IRS presumably effing knows. So we are unamused. And by unamused, we mean spraying streams of blood from our eyes like a horned toad on a meth binge.

We'll try to appeal, of course, encouraged by the sense of empathy, compassion, and fair play for which the IRS is famous (our caseworker is someone named Lois Lerner) and if we have to pay up, well, we'll just do our level best to milk the government for every cent we can pull out of them via benefit programs. 

Not that this will necessarily be easy. Next week, the Jarlsbergs are scheduled to meet with Social Security following Mrs. J's application for benefits. Apparently she's been flagged as a possible fraud, and further interrogation will be required. No doubt by Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Adam Schiff, and Jerry "Tweedledee" Nadler.

And the horses they rode in on.

With that IRS fine, we could have bought 331 jugs of this.