Fall and Incompetence

After what has seemed like an unnecessarily busy week, I finally had a few minutes to stop and take in what is passing at the moment for fall in Texas.  Though it is still hot, the trees are starting to lose their leaves.  The leaves themselves aren't the beautiful yellows, oranges, golds, and reds like can be seen on the east coast, but if you catch the sun and the brown leaves at just the right time of day, the setting sun helps to give the fallen leaves a bit of color.

Here is another hint of fall.

One of the things that has made this week so stressful is having to deal with agencies and people who seemingly are incapable of doing their jobs.  Let's just say that the Delaware Division of Revenue is totally incompetent.  I got a letter about six weeks ago saying that they were missing one of dad's tax payments for 2014.  I was 100% sure that that was not the case.  I tracked down evidence of the missing check that they had indeed cashed, sent them a letter pointing out the error of their ways and of course included a copy of the check.  This week, I got another letter from them saying that the issue had not yet been resolved.  This time I called and spoke to a reasonably helpful person who told me that they had received my letter and the situation had been corrected.  BUT, she noticed that there seemed to also be a problem with dad's 2013 taxes.  A quarterly payment was missing there too.  What?  I said to the woman that there had been no correspondence about this issue in over a year.  How could there possibly be a problem?  Again, she told me that I would have to produce a check...from 2013, way before my dad even got sick.  WTF!  I was bound and determined to find a copy of that check.

Fortunately, my dad was very organized and methodical in his record keeping.  Sure enough, I found his record of payment and called the financial institution and they are sending me a copy of the check with the Delaware Division of Revenue deposit stamp on the back.

How in the world can the state division of revenue lose two checks from the same person two years in a row?  That is totally unacceptable!  I am not one whose thoughts normally go immediately to seeing the worst possible scenario, but it almost feels like they realized that dad was deceased and were banking (no pun intended) on the fact that I wouldn't be able to produce the necessary documents and would thus have to pay (again) the amount they said was owed.  I wonder how many people have been forced to pay tax bills that they didn't really owe because the tax office "lost" their payments?  

Thank you dad for being so organized!  I was able to find everything that I needed.  I have learned an important lesson from you regarding keeping all those statements and check registers!

Though things are under control now, I was not at all pleased to have to deal with all of this.  My week kind of felt like this chaotic mess of spider webs.

Thankfully it has all ended on a sweet note.

And tomorrow is Friday!!!