I came across this MUST read article. Note that this is written by a very experienced EA (“IRS Enrolled Agent“). He notes that it is hard to communicate with the IRS from Alaska. It is much harder for U.S. citizens abroad to communicate with the IRS. This is definitely worth a careful read. You will understand the IRS better.
Alaska EA: It’s not ineptness or incompetence, The IRS is stealing from you sitnews.us/0113Viewpoints… – #ameriansabroad lackaccess to IRS too
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 14, 2013
Those who are NOT twitter literate can read the article here.
January 12, 2013
Saturday AM
By 1989 the Internal Revenue Service had closed virtually all of its field offices in Alaska, concentrating everything in Anchorage with an adjunct in Fairbanks. Travel budgets for IRS employees were virtually eliminated, too, so by the early 1990s almost all audits in the state of Alaska were done by telephone and fax machine. It was a system that worked because there was some IRS employee in Anchorage available via phone to us folks in the bush who would deal with our problem. Then in 2007 we got a new IRS commissioner and considerable transition in the Anchorage office, more or less simultaneously. One Sue Matters took over in Anchorage what used to be called “Problems Resolution,” put up a sign saying “Walk-ins welcome,” and turned off the telephone. So Anchorage is serviced, and the rest of us have been dumped into a large black hole.
