Dear Sir, We regret to inform you that...

Okay, it wasn't really that bad.

I got a letter from the Illinois Department of Revenue today, politely informing me that we owed $1000 in taxes on our income and could we please pay it as soon as possible. Once my heart started beating again, I grabbed last year's tax return and compared it with the letter. Fortunately, I saw it was a simple error (though it's still my fault)--I hadn't sent in copies of schoolpsychnerd and my W2 forms, so the government had no proof that we had paid any state taxes at all. We have, of course, so I'm mailing it out tomorrow. While I might still owe fees and penalties for forgetting this, I didn't make some kind of horrific mistake that will drain our savings. This is what comes of filing online for years and then having to go back to that medieval "paper" crap.

I've been playing a half-translated Japanese Roguelike called Elona lately. In the manner of most Roguelikes, it is fiendishly difficult and actively evil--the tutorial has you eat a piece of food to demonstrate you know how to...except the food is a human corpse, so eating it makes you go insane. Magical storms occasionally catch you when you're outside and mutate you into horrible things...the works. Most of the stuff is randomly generated, which can lead to hilarious results. For example:

"I want to give my kid a [rod of summon monsters] as a birthday present. If you can send me this item, I'll pay you 1222 gold pieces and ores in exchange."

Oh yeah, lady. That'll end well. The one below that wanted to give her kid a [dead fish] as a birthday present.

At least I have my pet little girl to keep me company.

Well, hopefully that's fixed

I assembled my proof, drafted a brief "Dear Sir or Madam" letter and sent it off to the Illinois Department of Revenue today. At the last moment, I noticed the "Page 2" they wanted was page two of the form they sent me, not page two of my IL-1040, but I sent both along anywhere. It certainly can't hurt. We might still have to pay some penalties, since I legitimately forgot to include the W-2s in the tax return, but at least we won't have to pay $1000.

My father told me a story about one time the IRS sent him a letter saying that he had overpaid by $60 and they had deposited it back into his bank account. Not wanting to get screwed, he ran the numbers again and found that they were wrong, and sent them a letter telling so. They agreed, and then asked for the $60 back...plus $1.32 in interest for late payment.

Oh, bureaucracy.