I recently received a letter in the mail from the IRS stating that I owed them $12K in taxes plus $2.5K in interest and another $2.5K in penalties for 2006. After the shock, the grief, and the tears wore off, I quickly determined that the mistake was theirs and not mine. What amazes me is that they can charge me penalties but when the mistake is theirs and requires my time and my accountant's time to clear up, I don't get to charge THEM penalties for THEIR error! (But I do have to say that they surprisingly VERY nice in clearing the matter up and even did so over the phone!)

Holding the government accountable for it's errors would bankrupt the government. Unlike the current situation where it's only $9 trillion in debt.

I used to work at IRS (Austin Service Center) back in the 70s. It was, by far, the WORST place I ever worked as far as employee treatment. Even my two previous tours in Vietnam were better. It was a white-collar job (some referred to it as gray-collar since we were office workers on production...x number of 1040s an hour, 2x number of 1040As an hour, etc.) but it really inhaled rapidly and deeply. Over my time there I had several different jobs (unpostables, error correction just for two), but all had one thing in common. That thing was identified by a wag on one of my shifts: Since we had no recourse against management when they treated us like crap, they treated us poorly because they knew the only one we could take it out on was the taxpayer. And there were days we did. (I can still hear his booming voice, directing his comment to the paper personification of the taxpayer: "You lose, Cruise!" Maybe it was a bad day for the tax examiner?

The great thing about TurboTax is that it knows whether you need to fill out a Form 6251 and will crank one out if required. Well worth the $19.95 a year for the Basic version.