The Virginian-Pilot 
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994                TAG: 9408190025
SECTION: COMMENTARY               PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By CARL CAHILL 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   76 lines

GUESS WHO HELPED HIM WITH HIS IRS PROBLEM?

No, sir, no advice is needed to help me decide who to vote for in Virginia's four-way U.S. Senate race. The Internal Revenue Service, albeit unintentionally, has pointed me to the right man.

You see, I thought I was due a $770 refund on my 1993 taxes. Big disappointment. The IRS mailed me a check for $113 instead.

With the check, which arrived in February, was a Notice 54 inviting me to inquire why my tax return calculations differed from the IRS's.

I inquired. And got a computer letter saying my calculations were incorrect. No explanation, just the message I made a mistake. A change-of-address form was enclosed.

I wrote again, asking the IRS to point out my errors so I would not repeat them on my tax return next year. And again, I got no explanation, just another change-of-address form in a computer letter stating ``please allow us five weeks'' for a reply. (Remember when Jimmy Carter ordered all federal employees to answer their mail within five days?)

Five weeks passed. Then along came a computer letter from William Mesure, Chief, Adjust/Correspondence Branch at the IRS office in Philadelphia. ``We can't allow the earned income credit you claimed,'' he wrote. Mesure never said why. But he did enclose another change-of-address form.

If I had any questions, Mesure wrote, call Kimberly Wharton at the Philadelphia office. I did. But she was taking the day off.

So I wrote IRS Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson, and Sens. Patrick Moynihan and David Pryor, and Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, since I had been told the lawmakers were on IRS oversight committees. I got no response from any of them, understandably in Rostenkowski; he was busy defending himself against corruption charges.

Next I wrote Kimberly Wharton. And got no response. No even a change-of-address form. I was not surprised. In decades of writing to public officials, I have never gotten a personal reply. (Now, whoa, that's not entirely true. Chesapeake Mayor William Ward, showing enormous alacrity for a public figure, took only two months to answer a letter I wrote him last spring.)

Somewhere in the incoming computer letters (or maybe it was in a telephone conversation with an IRS employee in Philadelphia) I learned that the agency sends out a change-of-address form with each of its millions and millions of pieces of mail.

The bitter cold of February gave way to the warm winds of spring, and one bright day in May I opened the mailbox to find a letter, unsolicited, from Sen. Charles S. Robb. Chuck, he signs himself.

Chuck wrote that he had heard from Sen. Moynihan. ``It has been a longstanding tradition in Congress to allow each member the opportunity to respond to the needs of their own constituents,'' Chuck told me. He said he'd make some inquiries.

That was on May 26. On June 7, he wrote again. ``I am making an additional inquiry into this and will let you know as soon as I have a response.'' I like Chuck. He's impatient, like his unempowered constituent down in Chesapeake.

Immediately - well, actually three days later - I got a hand-written note from Barbara Orndorff, a tax technician in the Richmond, Virginia, Problem Resolution Office of the IRS. In her note was an apology and an explanation of why I was refunded $113 instead of $770. (I had been led to believe by printed instructions with my Form 1040 that I was a statutory employee when I was not.)

One senator and almost four months after my first inquiry I had my answer.

But wait. More surprises from Chuck Robb. Late in July he wrote a third time. ``In checking with the Internal Revenue Service, I was pleased to note that they had corresponded directly with you. I trust their response addressed your concerns.''

Now, is he a public servant to a groveling taxpayer who's out $657 because of muddled IRS instructions or what?

Oh, by the way, does anyone have a need for a stack of IRS change-of-address forms?Guess who helped him with his IRS problem? MEMO: Mr. Cahill lives in Chesapeake. by CNB