February 2025 Update: FTB did respond to the requests.
At the FTB Board Meeting on Monday, December 8, in addition to making my planned speech, I had the opportunity to make a couple of off-the-cuff public comments that helped to put the pieces together of how FTB uses “gross incompetence” as a cover for their bona-fide criminal schemes to overcharge taxpayers, particularly small businesses.
The first comment was in response to a presentation on how FTB was going to improve its customer service by modernizing its contact platform. In the presentation, Mr. Banuelos and Ms. SoRelle did not address the serious problem that FTB has with hanging up on callers, so I asked about it in an 80-second public comment. FTB did not even acknowledge that I had made the comment.
This is the letter from FTB’s Disclosure Department that I had referenced in the video. From page 2:
“…we interpret your reference to “the collections department” to be our Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) Division. The percentage of calls answered in the ARM Division is 96% for Personal Income Tax (800-689-4776) and 47.5% for Business Entities (888-635-0494) for the period of January 2025 through May 2025.” and “The percentage of customers who voluntarily hang up before speaking with an FTB customer service agent is 5.7% for Personal Income Tax (800-689-4776), 16.2% for Business Entities (888-635-0494)…”
Since I had not looked at the numbers prior to speaking, I was a bit off in how I remembered them. So, to correct the record: Per the letter, personal collections answered 96% of all calls, which means they didn’t answer 4% of calls. In 5.7% of the calls, people chose to hang up, which means FTB hung up on -1.7% of calls. Clearly, something was wrong with FTB’s numbers.
So, knowing the numbers are skewed, let’s look at business collections. FTB answered 47.5% of business collection calls, which means they didn’t answer 52.5% of calls. In 16.2% of the calls, people chose to hang up, which means that FTB hung up on 36.3% of calls. So the business numbers were significantly worse than I remembered them to be!
Since FTB did not acknowledge my comment, I sent a follow up email stating that I expected a response and an email with corrected numbers. Also, FYI, here is the addendum to the above-referenced Disclosure Department letter with more information about their rate of response for non-collection departments, chat and virtual hold.
The second public comment was in response to Agenda Item #7, where Board Members could bring up issues of concerns to them. Board Member Ted Gaines asked about Protests, which is basically a dispute stating why you don’t owe the money that FTB has assessed. I made a 90-second public comment explaining that the FTB has a backdoor system of unlawfully denying Protests — FTB processes correspondence so slowly that Protests are simply not processed before the person/business is moved to involuntary collections.
As you heard in the video, FTB’s Chief, Legal Counsel, Shane Hofeling, said he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I followed up the next morning with a letter with more details regarding how the scheme works: By the time FTB processes the Protest, the taxpayer has already been unlawfully moved into involuntary collections and had their money stolen out of their bank account or had a crippling wage garnishment instituted. As was documented in Grab v FTB in San Diego Superior Court, in order to cover up this gross violation of the Taxpayer Right to Protest, FTB “misclassifies” the Protests — which means they file them on the wrong year to make it falsely appear that the taxpayer hadn’t responded.
On Tuesday morning, I realized that I had forgotten a really important part of this scheme. For people who do get their Protest processed before the deadline, FTB sends them a letter saying that if they do not withdraw their Protest, they will be fined $5,000. I believe this is unlawful coercion to force people to waive their Taxpayer Rights. So I sent a follow up email addressing this systemic coercion.
I doubt FTB will respond to either public comment, but I will post an update if they do.
On December 10, I decided to again address concerns that I have about FTB psychologically abusing its staff into committing bona fide crimes against the constitutes. I resent an email from 2023 where I chastised FTB’s HR, executive staff and Board members for again allowing the legal department to frame an FTB employee for committing a crime — in this case, a Disclosure Department employee violated the Brown Act by improperly redacting documents to hide evidence. The other email that was referred to in this email was a legislative request made in 2021 to asking that FTB be required to follow the due process laws set forth in the 5th Amendment of the Constitution. That 2021 email was also resent. The original email chain with FTB that set off the above-referenced chain of correspondence is here.
Note: I am not suicidal, I don’t have depression issues, I am a careful driver, I rarely drink alcohol, and I do not use drugs of any kind (not even aspirin). My family lives a wholesome life. If something happens to me or my family that is out of character for us, we were set up by the State of California as revenge for exposing their crimes.