Summary: I have been trying to get the Franchise Tax Board to end some blatantly illegal business practices. The basics are:
1. The FTB is illegally putting your estimated tax payments into a general slush fund instead of into your account. The money isn’t put into your account until you file your return for that year; basically, the State of CA is temporarily embezzling your money. If you file late, they harass you for payments that would not be owed/impose penalties that would not have been assessed had the money been applied to your account in accordance with the law.
2. The FTB “accidentally” misapplies money to previous years and send you a refund, leaving the current year underfunded. Like the withholding scheme, if you file your returns late, penalties are falsely imposed. Where it gets suspicious is that it takes months to send the refunds. The refunds are difficult to identify – you just get a check in the mail from the State of CA with no letter. The refunds have interest added or are broken up into multiple years (issuing a separate check for each year), so you don’t immediately identify that this mystery money may be a refunded tax payment. The FTB has an unusually difficult time locating these particular “lost” payments, taking months and years to locate. Once located, they will accept another payment from you and retroactively apply it to your account for the date that the original payment was made, thus correcting the underfunding problem. But it takes them months to apply the money. And the accounting ledgers tied to these “misapplied” payments are inaccurate, with missing line items and incorrect dates.
Update: I have been engaging from multiple angles. Here is a run-down of what I have done the last few months.
Speech:
In December 2019, I made another speech at the Annual Taxpayer Bill of Rights Meeting. It is clear, concise and damning. Here is the 11-minute video and here is the text.
The FTB had the right to publicly rebut me during the meeting, but they waived their right. The fact that they did not deny the allegations says it all. Here is the FTB’s written response.
Here is my analysis of their response.
Lawsuit:
FTB’s response was basically a big F-U, so I have filed a lawsuit against them in Superior Court of CA.
The brief clearly lays out the mechanisms of the two racketeering schemes that I have uncovered. It also clearly identifies the unethical and underhanded tactics that the Office of Tax Appeals* utilizes in order to cover up FTB’s criminal activity.
*The OTA is an administrative court that handles FTB appeals. Up until January 2018, the Board of Equalization heard FTB appeals. The BOE appeal process was casual, with no attorney needed, but a free student lawyer was available through the TAAP program if you wanted one. The judges were elected officials who were eager to please their constituents, so they often sided with the taxpayers.
In January 2018, Governor Brown and State Controller Betty Yee launched the OTA. This is a real court where you need a lawyer. They also moved TAAP to be overseen by the FTB. So now, the FTB gets to decide whether you get a lawyer or not, and that lawyer is fighting against his own employer to get you your money back. More details here.*
Legislature:
I have 5 legislative ideas that will help curb the tax agencies ability to execute corrupt practices and provide more accountability in oversight. I sent a copy of my suit to every legislator on the Senate and Assembly Tax Committees with a request that they put my legislative ideas on the table this year.
The feedback that I have gotten from the legislators is they are uninterested in hearing one person whine about unfair fees. They said in order to be credible, I need to gather a posse (see FAQ’s for why).
Help Me Gather A Posse:
Please join my posse. To be honest, I am not sure what to do once I have a posse, but I will figure it out as I go. I’m guessing the next step is to launch petitions for each item, so send me an email at FTBFighter (at symbol) protonmail.com if you are up for signing a petition or something along those lines to support my legislative ideas.
Please share my video all over the place to spread the word about the FTB’s corruption, and ask others to join my posse, too.
Hello Mrs. Grab. I saw your article on Investment Watch. It immediately caught my eye as I’m involved in a similar situation in Placer County regarding property taxes…theft on a grand scale that I’m trying to bring to the public’s attention and get corrected. The blatant stonewalling and coverup by those in government is so difficult to overcome. I’m to the Superior Court stage now–but don’t have funds for that. So, I’m going to the public, directly, too. Best of luck with your efforts. This is our part in the Great Awakening, I’ve reasoned.
My article on Investment Watch? I wasn’t aware of an article?
I also don’t have the money to hire an attorney for my Superior Court case, so I decided to act as my own attorney. I went to the Law Library and they were very helpful in finding me all the laws and procedure so I knew what to do to write my own brief/evidence package and file my own case. I am doing an appeal, and I figure if I screw up my appeal, I can still file a harassment case and in theory the lawyer will be cheaper since I’ve already done all the legwork with my appeal.
I’ll keep you posted on my efforts at changing legislation to better protect the public. This is something you can actively participate in. Since the legislative cycle doesn’t start again until September, I’ve kind of put it on the back burner for now.But I will reach out when I pick it up again this summer.
If you think of any ways I can be useful to you or vice versa, please reach out. Government bureaucracy is a nightmare to navigate by design, and the more we can share tips and info on how to best navigate the system, the more successful you and I and everyone else who has been scammed will be.