The IRS Sent an Auditor to My Kansas Wheat Farm. She Found a Mistake, But Not the One She Was Looking For

I stared at her.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve been overpaying your taxes,” she said. “For at least six years. Probably longer.”

She turned her laptop around and showed me.

I hadn’t been taking deductions I was entitled to. Farm equipment depreciation done wrong. Conservation program payments reported the wrong way. Crop insurance proceeds I’d paid tax on in the wrong year. Fuel credits for farm machinery I’d never claimed.

And there was something else.

“Your VA disability compensation isn’t taxable,” she said. “You’ve been reporting it as income. Every year.”

I sat down hard in my chair.

“How much?”

“For the three years I examined, about forty-one thousand dollars in overpaid tax. Plus interest. And you can file amended returns for the previous years.”

“The IRS is going to give me money back?”

“The IRS is going to give you your money back,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d been dreading this for months. I’d lost sleep. I’d imagined penalties and liens and losing the farm.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked. “You could have just closed the audit.”

She was quiet for a long moment.

“Because my brother came home from his last deployment and couldn’t figure out his paperwork either,” she said. “He was too proud to ask for help. He lost his house over a tax lien he didn’t even owe.”

She looked at me.

“I became an IRS examiner so I could be on the other side of that table.”