Your Gub’ment At Work
Got a letter from a lawyer’s office today, which is always a bit freaky. “what the hell did I do?” you think to yourself.
It turns out, it was more of what I didn’t do. Apparently, in 2004, I was supposed to have paid $9 in income tax and didn’t. (News to me, I have no recollection of 2004 at all). So, since I was so late with it, they added a $10 penalty.
And hired a legal firm to collect.
Now, it probably took said legal officers about 15 minutes to set up an account in their system for me, print out the letter, hand-address an envelope, run it through the postage meter and then drop it in the OUT box. With my understanding of the average legal fees, that probably cost the county $25 to collect $19.
Oh, wait, make that $18, there’s a discount for paying online. I hope the County gets a bulk discount for the other 20,000 people that owe them 10 bucks.
Okay, I understand that the legal firm is probably only charging the County a percentage of the funds collected, but still. It seems kind of a silly way to go about it, since the County could just as easily have tasked an intern with calling or mailing people to let them know they owe something before sending them to collections.
Cuz really – 6 years, and this is the first I’ve heard of it? Oi.
Hollerings