The IRS pushes hard and relentlessly - so do all government agencies.  Jim has spent five years struggling with the IRS over $8,000 the agency is holding out of a refund.

     Over the summer, he finally sought help from the agency’s Taxpayer Advocate Service, a sort of public defender for people who are dealing with the IRS. He was assigned an advocate to go to bat for him.  Only now the advocate isn’t responding, and neither is the IRS.  It turns out that once a taxpayer gets an advocate, the IRS says it is no longer allowed to talk directly to the taxpayer. So Jim, a pseudonym The Washington Times granted the taxpayer, is stuck.

     “Being assigned a Taxpayer Advocate is actually working against me as a taxpayer,” Jim, who works in banking, said in a letter to Erin Collins, the congressionally appointed National Taxpayer Advocate.   It’s a bizarre trap — and one that other taxpayers have fallen into, according to Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union.