FTB’s 4 Schemes to Overcharge Interest

In response to the requests for documents that I had made in October 2020, FTB did provide amortization tables showing how they calculated the interest that they charged us. I went through the amortization schedules line by line and caught FTB overcharging interest via four different mechanisms:

1. FTB’s accounting system seems to systematically add small amounts of excess interest. 

2. FTB staff can apparently manually override the system to artificially inflate interest due. (In 2018, I’d caught another instance of this, as well).

3. FTB entirely withholds some of the payments collected to make it appear that the taxpayer has a higher outstanding balance than he does, and thus charges him more interest than they should. 

4. On payments that have been applied, portions of the payment vanish from the interest calculation screen, despite the fact the full payment amount seems to appear in the rest of FTB’s records. 

On January 10, 2021, I sent this letter and proof FTB’s Taxpayer Advocate, FTB’s Board of Directors, FTB’s Executive Officers and several staff at GovOps. I also copied two people who work directly in Governor Newsom’s office, Stacy O’Brien and Blake Kaiser-Lack, along with members and staff of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee and members and staff of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation. And I sent a copy to my own State Senator, Toni Atkins, who is Senate President pro Tempore and wields great power.

Everyone who got this letter has the power of oversight over FTB. The official word from the legislators is that they will do NOTHING to stop the unlawful activities. Colin Grinnell, Staff Director of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, verbally told me that the legislators won’t intervene unless a judge sides with me in court. This explains why the OTA judges gave such a blatantly corrupt verdict and why the CA Supreme Court gave no explanation as to why they would not hear my case.