CHIMACUM — When self-employed market analyst Brian Lawson and his wife, Jackie, ordered over the phone an instructional tax booklet from the Internal Revenue Service, they thought their request was simple enough.
They were wrong.
On Wednesday night, about three weeks after the order was placed, a United Parcel Service truck parked in front of the Lawson’s home on Center Road and delivered 12 boxes containing 2,000 booklets each — or 24,000 in all.
That’s 23,999 more than the couple ordered.
Not only was the number of booklets grossly inflated from the requested order, but the IRS sent the wrong item.
The Lawsons ordered a 2003 1040 instructional booklet to guide them in fixing a mistake made on that year’s taxes — a small numerical error, said Brian, that has had them paying $300 a month in back taxes since their 2003 taxes were filed.
The booklet was supposed to help solve all their tax problems and end the payments.
Blunders wide-ranging
Instead, a blunder of much grander proportions is what they got.
“We’re hoping they’ll be more understanding of our error since they made this big error,” said Brian.
Stacked next to the Lawsons’ front door are 240 pounds of 2005 1040 instructional booklets postmarked from Bloomington, Ill., that prompt Brian to smirk when he looks at them.
“Maybe I’ll put a sign up that says, ‘Get your 1040 books here,”‘ Brian said.
Even more amazing is that each box is addressed to “Chimacum, D.C.” and not “Chimacum, WA.”
With several unreturned calls to the IRS on Thursday, Brian said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the 24,000 booklets, but said if the IRS doesn’t want them back, he’ll probably recycle the 81-page publications or burn them in his fireplace.
He is most concerned that he still doesn’t have the tax booklet he needs to fix the 2003 mistake.
IRS unavailable
When the Peninsula Daily News attempted to contact the IRS to inquire how such a mistake might have occurred, the call was transferred three times only to hit a final wall in the form of an unreturned message to the media relations department in Seattle.
About 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Brian received a call about tax booklets — only it was from UPS and not the IRS.
A UPS employee called to inform Brian that an additional 12 boxes filled with 24,000 more booklets just arrived at the deliverer’s warehouse, and they were addressed to him.
Lawson told the UPS employee not to deliver them because he already had enough tax information.