Replying To The IRS

Backstory:

About 3 weeks ago I got a letter from the IRS. They were requesting another copy of the information supporting my income on my Schedule C. Translation is my income from club sales of my jewelry from last year. Last year was a good one, just a hair over the mandatory reporting $600. Reading between their lines, they misplaced my 1099. I know I sent it to them because all my tax info goes into a single envelope and I only had state and personal copies left. I did fill in the bare minimum of lines on the Schedule C, my name, etc., amount earned, no deductions because 1: it was too much bother, and 2: I didn't need them because I didn't need to pay any taxes. In fact, the income is so low I didn't even need to file. However, this was back when "everybody" was saying on the news that those of who are retired needed to file because they wouldn't be able to find us for our $1200 stimulus checks. Considering who our president was at the time, it didn't seem too far-fetched that they couldn't figure out how to follow our SS automatic deposit checks and send the stimulus checks the same way.

Call me a cynic.

The reply:

First they wanted some information, nevermind most of it was already on the other side of the same sheet of paper. My name, SS#, just redundant silliness. I guess they are too busy to flip the page? OK, I filled them in. Number of pages I was faxing? Zero. They are reading this from the mail and can't figure that out? Phone number? check. Hours they could call me on it? That needed some commentary: "Anytime I'm near my phone, since women's pants pockets don't hold the things." Hey, that's as precise as I can get. I didn't bother mentioning that if I'm in the club or similar buildings, the phone is cut off the grid. Not smart phones, apparently. Just mine. They can leave voicemail. Or send another letter. (Good luck with that.)

They left a little space on the bottom of the paper, so I added a little bit more.

"I'm sorry you lost my original copy of the 1099. Perhaps if you quit refusing to let us use staples or paper clips, it might quit happening. I apologize that this (State) copy is less legible than the original, but if you still can't read this one, perhaps you can go to the original that our club sent you. They do still do that, don't they, so you can be sure we taxpayers aren't lying?"

I had tried to make a xerox copy of the state version, but the copier mostly left the blanks just that: blank. Cost me a quarter to find that out. And as for the originals sent directly to the IRS, it works for banks and everyone else, so I'm just assuming if they were really interested, they'd have access. Then I went on....

"I did not fill in all the blanks on my Schedule C because 1: it was too much work and 2: I didn't need to. My income was so small I didn't need to pay taxes, and wouldn't even have filed except "they" were all over the news telling us we needed to because otherwise you couldn't find us for the $1200 stimulus checks. I wanted to believe that you were smarter than that, but I'm beginning to wonder what else you can lose track of." Then I signed it.

It did wind up being more than fit in the bottom margin, so I had to write in an arrow to where I finished higher up along the right margin.  Do you think they can find that?

Am I wrong to hope they have a sense of humor? Oh well, I still don't owe any taxes.