Request return of Fed Income tax penalties assessed

What is the name of your state? Washington, DC

Summer of 1999 I entered into a payment plan agreement with the IRS to repay back multiple years of back taxes. By the time I was finish paying OCT 2002, at $150.00 bi-weekly, I paid IRS about $14,000.00 in back taxes. Please note, that much of the cost was associated with penalties, due to non payment of taxes owed because the original tax amount owed was not that much, but the penalties and interest overtime accumulated to a substantial amount.

In any event, when I set up the payment plan the IRS rep indicated that once i had paid off my tax debt obligation, i could send a letter requesting that they waive some of the penalties and request a refund back. I was told that this request could only be made after I had first paid the entire debt for each year back first.

Question; Have anyone ever heard of this, where a taxpayer requests a refund back on penalties paid.

Question 2; Do you know if there is a time line (limit), on how long I have after paying the full tax debt obligation to request this waiver in writing to them. As i indicated my obligation to them was meet in full in Oct 2002, more than 7 mons. ago

Any advice/suggestions would be carefully considered and appreciated. Thanxs

It sounds like the IRS rep may not have been completely truthful about this or may have been trying to mislead you just to get you to feel comfortable about paying.

There would be no logical reason for them to refund any monies to you in regard to a legitimate debt you were paying, but knowing how inept government agencies are, they probably found a way to collect more money from you than they were entitled to from you just so they would have to give you a headache about filing a claim to get the overpayment back.

You need to be speaking directly to the IRS about this in a phone call (don't talk to your personal IRS rep but try to contact someone else who works for the IRS), but better yet, look in your phone book under the Tax Acccountants section in the yellow pages to see if you can find any ads that show an "Enrolled Agent", who would be a tax professional now in private practice who previously (a few years ago) had worked for the IRS. You should consult with the enrolled agent about your situation, since they would be knowledgeable about the rules/regulations and could probably advise you how to proceed.

How much money do you think they owe you?