Games Tax Agencies Play
I live in NJ, and last year (and half of this year -- but that's another story) I worked in New York State (Manhattan to be precise). This meant that back in April, in addition to the Federal tax return, I also had to file returns for both NY & NJ. I used TaxCut (Sooo much better that TurboTax), which has the interesting quirk of only allowing you to file one state return electronically.
So, I had to mail the NYS return. I made one small mistake --- I forgot to include my W-2 form. (As it is impossible to include the form with the electronically filed returns, I just forgot about it). Apparently, New York State took offense to this, and sent me a letter complaining about "a problem" with the return (It did take a bit of figuring to determine the problem was the missing W-2). But at the time I had bigger problems (It's related to why I'm not working in NYC anymore), and, since I was getting a refund anyway, I wasn't too concerned about it, and put it off for a while (and I still had to find my w-2 form).
Apparently, NY State doesn't like being ignored. They sent me a letter claiming that I owed the $4400! Reviewing the letter, it included a summary of my tax return --- exact as I had filed it, with one exception --- they did not acknowledge that I had had any money withheld from my paycheck to pay the state tax. I returned the letter (with the "Dispute" box checked) including a new copy of my return with the w-2.
But, I did find it interesting that the one line of my tax return that they chose not to believe was the one line that they knew for a fact was correct --- the amount of money I had already paid them.