The Obama vision of "transparency" doesn't seem to apply to this agency. All reps have a fictious name and serial number and they hold all the cards to the deck. Case in point -  I recently spent 35 minutes holding for an agent after two previous aborted 30+ minute holds and 2 registered letters. Another 2.5 hrs to work through a $33K tax bill that was attributed to a primary  home purchase during the faltering ecomony (2008). Due to stiffening loan requirements, the lender required 30% down-we withdrew $54K from savings so we could end our era of renting. It was a foreclosure property we were purchasing. The IRS will not credit us a red anti-American nickle on that "income" and to boot, they have stuck another $12K in penalties atop the bill because they "lost" the original efile. What started as a $33K penalty for purchasing a foreclosure and rescuing it from staying a Fannie Mae loss, is now a $45K penalty. I would say we did the social responsible thing and we're being penalized by an agency that is not social-responsibility minded.

After my 2 registered mails, three calls, only one which was successful in reaching an agent and 2 months of waiting for our payment plan to be approved, I am told I have 1 day to approve we will accept one of two options, but only after they already seized our bank account first because the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. Here's the options;

1. monthly payment plan will be equal to my husbands' monthly pension (he worked hard as a police officer for 26 years for this pension) +another  $100 monthly

--or--

2. pay in full from his hard-earned 26 year police retirement funds (and be penalized a second time for yet another withdrawal and pay taxes on that as income too).  I was also advised that since we are helping a relative who is unemployed, "that's our choice" but they will not recognize that expense when computing our ability to repay the tax debt.  Another words, don't help the nephew who's own home is near foreclosure, let it ping pong back to become yet another Fannie Mae government loss.

We as tax-paying Americans raised this agency called IRS. It needs to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up starting with giving people real names instead of giving policies they must hide behind.