Feds went after Minooka woman for overpayment of survivor's benefits from 35 years ago
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The federal government no longer has a statue of limitations when it
comes to collecting on debt that is owed to them. Lisa Parker reports.
Buried deep inside a massive piece of legislation
passed by Congress sits a little-noticed passage that, with few
exceptions, wipes out any statute of limitation for a debt owed to the
federal government.
Thanks to the "Food, Conservation and
Energy Act of 2008," anyone overpaid by a federal agency, at any time
in their life, can now be tracked down and put on the hook for debts
that are decades old.
For Bridget Galazkiewicz of Minooka,
the unexpected tax grab began in the form of a mysterious message from
the IRS she received the day after she expected her tax refund.
"If you haven't already seen a letter, expect one," she said of the message.
Soon thereafter, a letter arrived
from the Department of the Treasury announcing the government had seized
all $1,200 of her 2012 return for a debt about which she said she knew
nothing.
There was no warning letter or call, just the seizure notice.
"It just raised more questions
because it said the money went to Social Security, and I am not on
Social Security... haven't been since I was a kid," Galazkiewicz
explained.
Calls to the Social Security Administration left her more confused.
"(They) told me that I was making too
much money in 1968. I was eight years old, so I don't think I was
making any money," she said. "I had a .25 cent allowance."
The letter contained a social
security number that Galazkiewicz thought had belonged to her mother.
Galazkiewicz later found out it was actually her father's. And the
confusion, she said, got thicker from there.
"And then (they) told me that my
mother was working, if I wasn't working, in 1968 and she made too much
money," Galazkiewicz recalled.
If you are thinking 45 years is too
far for the government to reach back, you would have been correct until
very recently. The tiny section tucked away on page 561 of the
legislation allowed the federal government to blow out any existing
statute of limitations and go after debts decades old.
"This completely lacks due process.
It is not a fair system at all," Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and
Budget Accountability told NBC5 Investigates. "So now they can go back
20, 30, 40 years -- which they are doing. It is problematic for
taxpayers on a number of levels."
Martire pointed out that some
federal agencies, such as the SSA, already had a 10-year statute of
limitations. To wipe that out and give agencies an "indefinite"
timeframe to go back and find their own mistakes, he said, is a bad
idea.
"If they haven't acted on a claim in
10 years, maybe they ought not act on it at all. Maybe it is marginal,"
he said. "This is guilty until proven innocent... a really unfair
burden to put on the taxpayer."
Ultimately, in Galazkiewicz' case,
the SSA said she was overpaid for survivor's benefits for her father,
who died in 1964. After an inquiry by NBC5 Investigates, a spokesperson
for the SSA said Bridget's wages rose for a four-month period in 1979,
and that increase led to an overpayment of the survivor's benefits.
Almost 35 years later, Galazkiewicz said she has no way to prove or
disprove what happened so many decades ago.
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