Irs Shows Its Best Face, But Halloween Over

Linda Flint should set more attainable goals, like getting O.J. to confess to butchering Nicole and Ron.

Instead, the Spokane woman is charging after the ultimate in impossible dreams: getting the IRS to correct a mistake.

Flint, 36, has wasted more than a year battering this windmill. The lawyer she hired has nearly cost her more than the $508.62 refund the IRS mailed to the wrong address.

So far, Flint and the tax attorney have been stymied by the arrogant inflexibility of the IRS.

Less courageous souls would gladly forfeit 500 bucks rather than tangle with the King Boa of all reptilian government agencies.

Flint, however, is dug in like some trench warrior. The money is a point of pride, a symbol she refuses to surrender.

“I’m frustrated beyond belief,” says Flint, a single mother of a 17-year-old daughter. “Maybe this is some game with the IRS. Maybe they’re all saying, ‘Hey, she looks like a sucker - let’s mess up her refund.’

“I can’t ever imagine giving up on this.”

Hmm. Maybe the tax sharks have met their match.

You can learn volumes about a bureaucracy by the way it handles a small problem. If the IRS plays this kind of hardball over $500, imagine what these vampires are like when real blood is on the line.

“The IRS deserves its reputation,” says Bruce Hondle, Flint’s tax attorney, who has hit a brick wall getting some justice for his client.

Hondle says his client’s problem is straightforward:

Since her 1990 divorce, Flint has filed all her 1040 tax returns as a “single head of household” without any problems.

Flint’s 1993 return was no different. Yet for some as yet unknown reason, the IRS treated this refund as if Flint filed a joint return.

The refund check was wrongly made out to Linda Darlene and Jim Flint.

Even that’s screwy. Darlene is Flint’s middle name. There is no Jim Flint. Flint’s ex-husband’s name is Jim Williams.

The IRS compounded the mess by mailing the check to an address not on the 1040 form. It was an apartment Flint hadn’t lived at for several years. Williams never lived there.

When the refund didn’t show, Flint began an inquiry. The IRS eventually mailed her a photocopy of the check. Someone had forged the names and cashed it.

The signatures aren’t remotely close to Flint’s handwriting. Yet the woman claims several IRS employees she spoke with treated her as if she were a crook trying to bilk the government out of another refund.

Yes indeed, paying a lawyer to go after $508.62 is clearly the action of a thief.

Flint hired Hondle last March out of frustration. The attorney thought he Sure enough. In 1984, someone stole and cashed Hondle’s refund check.

He says he talked to an FBI agent, who compared Hondle’s signature with the one on the cashed check. Satisfied a forgery had taken place, the government issued a new refund.

Not this time. Try as he might, Hondle can’t get the IRS to admit anything.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous,” says the lawyer. “I was going to call (Congressman George) Nethercutt’s office.”

Smart choice. Nethercutt would love to give the IRS a permanent vacation.

A cranky-sounding IRS public relations officer was a big help. Refusing to discuss Flint’s case, she kept repeating - “the problem resolution (hot line) is an excellent source for the taxpayer” - like some mantra.

Give it a rest. Flint’s been down that rocky road.

“It’s not my concern the IRS issued the check to the wrong people, the wrong address and somebody cashed it. That’s their problem,” she adds.

“I feel I’m a reasonable person. I just want my money.”

, DataTimes