California Tax Board Rant

Next up in the rant department is the California Franchise Tax Board which is in charge of collecting California's income tax.  Bottom line, if you have a problem with your California taxes call the taxpayer rights advocate number.  Apparently it exists because the regular process is often an ordeal.

While I live in New Jersey my employer has a location in California where I have worked several summers most recently in 2019.  This requires me to file a non-resident income tax form with California and pay the appropriate tax on my California wages.  I use TurboTax to do my income taxes.  However TurboTax only includes one state income tax return.  Additional states can be purchased but being cheap when doing my 2019 taxes I filled out the California non-residence forms myself.  Unfortunately I made a small error.

My California return included form 540NR and schedule CA.  540NR is the main form, the purpose of schedule CA is to reduce your allowed deduction based on the ratio of your California income to your total income.  After completing schedule CA you were suppose to copy two numbers back to form 540NR, your California income and your California taxable income after your allowed deduction.  Unfortunately I only copied the second number back which is the only number used going forward (and the only number schedule CA tells you to transfer back).  As a result I left line 32 of form 540NR blank but everything else including the tax owed was correct.

A few months later California sent me a refund check for my entire tax paid in 2019 and a notice that they had changed my return.  Apparently some computer program had seen the blank line 32 and ignoring everything else in the return had deduced I had no California income and therefore owed no California tax.  This was remarkably foolish as any human reviewing the return would have seen easily that it was line 32 that was wrong not everything else on the return.  And I think it would be a good idea for to have a human review computer changes rather than automatically send out a check for the entire tax paid.  I expect it is pretty rare for people to work in California, have substantial taxes withheld from their wages, submit a return with an additional payment but nevertheless actually owe no California taxes.

I didn't cash the refund check because I knew it was sent in error and starting calling the California tax help number.  This involved long periods (a hour or more) on hold.  California supposedly had a call back system but unlike Amtrak's it didn't work properly, my phone would ring once and then go to voice mail.  Eventually I got through to someone but they were not very helpful.  For some reason although what had happened should have been obvious they required I submit a written explanation.  I did this but made another error in that I didn't include an entire corrected return.

After hearing nothing for months I called again and when I eventually reached a representative they disclaimed all knowledge of my letter of explanation, apparently because I hadn't precisely followed their amended return process it had just been thrown away.  So I sent another written explanation this time including a formal amended return.       

After another long delay California sent me a letter changing my tax owed back to the amount I had originally calculated adding interest and fees and demanding payment.  After trying and failing to reach someone at the regular help number I eventually tried the taxpayer rights advocate number.   This quickly reached a representative who put a hold on my account and told me that I could resolve the situation by returning the refund check (which fortunately I still had).  I did this.

After a long vacation I tried calling back the person I had talked to.  This took several attempts (apparently they don't check their voice mail) but eventually I got through.  California had received the returned check and this had in fact resolved the situation. I requested (and eventually received) a statement showing a zero balance. 

The whole experience was infuriating.  Liberals claim to be the good government party but they often show little interest in the (no doubt boring) job of making government work well.  Democrats claim that Republicans have kept the federal IRS underfunded and perhaps that is true.  But there is no such excuse for California, the Democrats have had complete control for a long time.  Nevertheless the California Franchise Tax Board appears to be totally incompetent.  Apparently good service just isn't a liberal priority.  This is shortsighted as it creates antigovernment feelings which reduces the popularity of the overall liberal agenda. 

Amtrak Refund Rant

 I haven't been posting much lately, maybe a few good rants will get me back in the mood.  First up is Amtrak.

As I have mentioned before, since I am afraid of flying I sometimes travel long distances by Amtrak.  So I had an Amtrak reservation from NYP to DEN (with a connection in CHI) leaving Friday, September 3, 2021 just before the Labor Day weekend.  I had purchased it online paying by credit card.  On Wednesday night the remnants of Hurricane Ida passed over New Jersey and New York bringing very heavy rain.  The resulting flooding caused my train to be cancelled.  Amtrak notified my of this by email Thursday night.  The email gave a phone number to reschedule and an email address to request a refund.  

Fortunately my plans were flexible and leaving a few days later was no big deal.  So I called to reschedule but got a message that it would be difficult to get through to a service representative until after the Labor Day weekend.  Still no problem, I could just book a new reservation online myself.  I did this leaving the following Thursday.  And I emailed a refund request and received an acknowledgement.

I duly took the later train and got to Denver okay.  But I don't hear anything more about my refund so eventually on Friday September 17, 2021 I called Amtrak customer service.  This involved a long wait for a call back (which to be sure is better than being kept on hold).  I eventually spoke to someone.  Despite the acknowledgement it appears that email refund requests are ignored (or at least not dealt with in any sort of timely fashion).  But the person I spoke to promised to process my refund request.  I was told it would take 7-10 days to appear.  And the refund for the NYP-CHI portion of my trip did appear on my credit card by the following Monday.  

However the refund for the CHI-DEN portion didn't show up even after 10 days.  I called Amtrak customer service several times to try to find out what was holding it up.  Each call involving lengthy waits for a call back and/or on hold.  However the representatives refused to investigate until two months had passed from the original call.  Purportedly to allow for credit card billing cycles although I could see online that I had not gotten a credit. So it wasn't until Friday, November 19 that someone was finally willing to trace the refund request.  At which point it developed that the reason I never gotten the credit is that it had never been requested.  Apparently the second part of the refund (for the connecting CHI-DEN train) required some supervisor's approval and it had been sitting in their email inbox for two months.  I was told it had now been approved and in fact it did appear on my credit card by the following Monday.

Obviously this is totally unacceptable customer service.  There is no reason that getting a refund for a cancelled train should be a lengthy and painful process.

2021 Portfolio Review

In 2021 my main brokerage account had a total return of 25.68% (23.55% capital gain, 2.13% income).  As usual I will compare to VOO, Vanguard's S&P 500 index ETF, which returned 28.60% (27.02% capital gain, 1.58% income).  So I lagged the market by 2.92%.  This is explained by my not being fully invested, a drag on performance in an up market.  

During the year IBM spun off KD.  I counted the value of the KD shares and the cash I received for a fractional share as part of the IBM capital return.  Other than that I made no buys or sells during the year making computations simple.  Since this is intended to be a before tax accounting I added back some foreign tax withheld to income.

At the start of 2021 my allocations were VOO 49.94%, other ETFs 10.34%, individual stocks 28.07% and cash 11.64%.  Cash returned .01% lagging VOO by 28.59% for 3.32% of overall underperformance.  My stocks returned 28.39% (24.92% capital gain, 3.47% income) lagging VOO by .21% for .05% of overall underperformance.  And my ETFs other than VOO returned 33.14% (29.56% capital gain, 3.58% income) outperforming VOO by 4.54% for .46% of overall outperformance.  This adds up to 2.91% of underperformance in good agreement with the actual 2.92%. 

2021 was a pretty good year for stocks.  My worst stock (not counting KD) in this account was INTL which still returned 6.16%.  And my other brokerage account was up 24.34%.

Last week I sold WBK (ADRs for an Australian bank).  It has done poorly and the ADR agreement was going to expire at the end of January.  So the sensible choice was to take my tax loss and not get stuck with the actual Australian shares which I expect could be problematic.  I also bought some DGX (Quest Diagnostics).  My medical insurer uses them for tests, they seem reasonably competent and I like to buy stock in companies that I have had positive (or at least neutral) customer experiences with.