I hope you are sitting down.
While it may come as a surprise to most NJ tax professionals, there actually are a few employees of the NJ Division of Taxation who are intelligent and competent. I recently worked with one while dealing with the Conference and Appeals Branch.
I had written to the Acting Director of NJDOT a while back regarding a corporate client when the outside collection agency used by the state was charging the client $1,000+ in penalties for an alleged $45.00 tax deficiency (the $45.00 had actually been paid by the client) and, as usual, normal correspondence to the DOT was totally ignored. Of course the AD did not respond directly to me, but sent my letter to an “underling” in the Conference and Appeals Branch. Unbeknownst to me, my letter to the AD had been used to institute a formal “protest”.
The person to whom my client’s situation was referred had no problem complying with my “eccentricity” of dealing via email (or postal mail) only, and never by phone, and the “case” was satisfactorily and promptly resolved via a couple of emails and mailings of documentation. At the request of the person with whom I dealt I officially withdrew my “protest” and the matter was closed. As I said in my final email to the C+A person, “All such contact with the State of New Jersey should be this efficient!”
Unfortunately, for every success story there are multiple tales of incompetence and frustration.
A client recently received a Statement of Account notice from the NJDOT indicating that the taxpayers owed “Uncle Jon” a ton of money. Upon review of the notice I discovered that the DOT did not give the taxpayer credit for $100,000.00 of NJGIT withholding, clearly reported on the 2006 NJ-1040 and on the Form W-2 included with the mailing of the return.
The NJDOT had made the exact same FU last year – sending the taxpayers a balance due notice because it had not included $100,000.00 in NJGIT withholding for 2005!
In both cases, the notice came almost six months after the taxpayer had submitted the returns, each of which requested a refund.
Last year the state’s FU was promptly cleared up via email and my faxing the state a copy of the W-2. I emailed NJDOT about this year’s FU late in the day on September 28th, but as of this writing I have not received a response.
I thought the fact that paper NJ-1040s, which were submitted in both years, are computer scanned was supposed to do away with “human error”. What gives?
TAFN
While it may come as a surprise to most NJ tax professionals, there actually are a few employees of the NJ Division of Taxation who are intelligent and competent. I recently worked with one while dealing with the Conference and Appeals Branch.
I had written to the Acting Director of NJDOT a while back regarding a corporate client when the outside collection agency used by the state was charging the client $1,000+ in penalties for an alleged $45.00 tax deficiency (the $45.00 had actually been paid by the client) and, as usual, normal correspondence to the DOT was totally ignored. Of course the AD did not respond directly to me, but sent my letter to an “underling” in the Conference and Appeals Branch. Unbeknownst to me, my letter to the AD had been used to institute a formal “protest”.
The person to whom my client’s situation was referred had no problem complying with my “eccentricity” of dealing via email (or postal mail) only, and never by phone, and the “case” was satisfactorily and promptly resolved via a couple of emails and mailings of documentation. At the request of the person with whom I dealt I officially withdrew my “protest” and the matter was closed. As I said in my final email to the C+A person, “All such contact with the State of New Jersey should be this efficient!”
Unfortunately, for every success story there are multiple tales of incompetence and frustration.
A client recently received a Statement of Account notice from the NJDOT indicating that the taxpayers owed “Uncle Jon” a ton of money. Upon review of the notice I discovered that the DOT did not give the taxpayer credit for $100,000.00 of NJGIT withholding, clearly reported on the 2006 NJ-1040 and on the Form W-2 included with the mailing of the return.
The NJDOT had made the exact same FU last year – sending the taxpayers a balance due notice because it had not included $100,000.00 in NJGIT withholding for 2005!
In both cases, the notice came almost six months after the taxpayer had submitted the returns, each of which requested a refund.
Last year the state’s FU was promptly cleared up via email and my faxing the state a copy of the W-2. I emailed NJDOT about this year’s FU late in the day on September 28th, but as of this writing I have not received a response.
I thought the fact that paper NJ-1040s, which were submitted in both years, are computer scanned was supposed to do away with “human error”. What gives?
TAFN
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