I know it has been a while since the last post, but to say that we have been overwhelmed might be a little bit of an understatement. Around the end of last month we ordered our first mail drop since our arrival in Antigua. We try to keep the drops to a minimum because of the courier costs. The only reliable method to get mail from the States to Antigua in a reasonable time is FedEx. This particular mail drop was special because it contained some stainless steel padlocks that we had ordered. Dave on Promise had turned us on to these locks while we were back in the USVI. He said he had had his forever and it didn't require lubrication or attention of any kind. The only catch was that this model of Master Lock was only available in Europe. I had found the locks on Amazon.uk so I ordered two since we intended to use them to lock the dinghy to docks where there was the ever present danger of dropping one in the drink. Having tracked the package on the FedEx website we knew when the package was on the island, so that day we went to Jane's Yacht Services to see if they could get more information on the package's delivery. They said that the package should be delivered that afternoon. This was great news as it was coming in several days earlier than scheduled and on my birthday. What also worked out great was that we didn't have to make a special trip to shore just to pick up the package because we had plans to meet friends for dinner that evening to celebrate my birthday. We picked up the pacakge that afternoon and took it to The Mad Mongoose where we were going to have dinner. I opened the outer package removing the lock's box and gave the rest of the mail to Pam. The good news was the locks were as advertised by Dave. Pam discovered the bad news when she opened an envelope from the IRS that we knew would be in the mail drop, but we expected it to be something else. The envelope actually contained what the IRS calls an Automated Adjustment Notice. On the first page of the multi-page document they announced that we owed a significant amount of money on our last year's taxes. This amount was so significant that only Charles Ponzi could have boasted returns like it to his would be investors. With our limited investments we could see how we could have made such income. In any case this development cast a pall over my birthday dinner. A dinner in which our friends told us about their various dealings with the IRS. Their stories made us feel a little better, but didn't stop me from staying up most of the night reviewing our tax filing. That night I was able to determine that their number did not take into account both losses and gains for mutual fund sales that had occurred that year. This discovery allowed me to relax enough to get at least a little sleep that night.

The following day Pam and I dug deeper into our information and discovered that I did make some mistakes when doing our 2010 taxes. I ended up under reporting our income because I missed printing out two pages of the year end statement supplied in .pdf format by our fiancial institution. Once assured that we had all the information we put together an amended return. If we are right this time we owe about 2% of the amount indicated in the IRS's notice. But this unfortunately is not the end of the story. The instructions in the notice said that we had only two days left to respond to said notice. Much of our time had been eaten up while the envelope sat in a bin at our mail forwarding service. We had seen that the envelope was there, but thought it to be a mailing of quarterly report forms that we usually have received around this time of year. Thankfully this assumption did not delay the mail to a point where we would not have had a chance to comply with the IRS's response deadline.

The next day we met friends that had offered the use of their laptop to use Skype for responding to the IRS. Pam and I have no experience with Skype so this offer was a true blessing. That day Pam was able to speak to a person at the IRS and clarify what we had to do next along with having that person note in our file that we had responded before the deadline. Unfortunately, she was unable to get a complete list of the information we needed to supply because she got disconnected by the internet connection that we had. In any case we believed that the information that we did get coupled with the instructions in the notice would be sufficient to put together our response documentation. The rest of that day was devoted to putting together 20 pages of information to be faxed. Being out here cruising emailing said documentation would have been faster, but the options available from the IRS were either mail or fax. Since we were already under the gun to respond by the notice's next deadline we had to go the fax route.

The following morning found us returning to Jane's Yacht Services for our fax adventure. The first attempt at faxing resulted in familiar tones eminating from the fax machine. Those tone being connected with a recording saying something like, "the call cannot be completed as dialed". We couldn't make out the recording and the girl sending the fax was struggling too because she had her ear down close to the top of the fax machine in her attempt to understand it. Evidently she thought that she understood the message and said she was trying a different number because all 800 numbers don't work from Antigua. This revalation made me very nervous because I had no idea where the fax would go. I had visions of all of our important identity information going who knows where. I was very relieved when I heard those familiar tones the second time. Afterwhich, the girl apologetically returned our papers to us. As we walked towards the door contemplating our next move Pam said, "I'm going to cry, I just know I'm going to cry". At that point a lady from the back of the office came up front carrying a portable phone. She asked us for the fax number which she in turn punched into her phone. She then listened to the now infamous recording and with her phone was better able to understand the instructions. She then said that they had to replace the 877 prefix with 882. So we decided to let her give that a try even though we had never heard of an 882 number in the scheme of 800 numbers. This time the fax went thru, so we knew it went somewhere and only had the hope that it went to the appropriate IRS number. On the internet, later that day, I discovered that 882 numbers are the pay version for 877. This bit of information made us feel a little bit more optomistic about the fax having gone to the right place. We figured that we should give it a coule of days before calling the IRS about their receipt of our fax. Besides, we had to take a look at this year's taxes which we had already e-filed earlier this year from the USVI. Well I am at least consistent, yes I made the same mistake again by not printing out some pages of the electronically received year end statement - damn! And I thought I was a pretty thorough guy, maybe it's to much sun. Who knows?

Long story short, we now had to file an amended return for the current tax year. We spent one whole day preparing our ammended return and printing out all the forms because they cannot be e-filed. Additionally, amended returns cannot be faxed so it would have to be sent regular mail because the address provided was post office box. We got a bit of good news from friends here on the island when they told us that generally mail going out to the US works well, but not so for incoming mail. The next moring found us at the local post office in English Harbor where we found out that they offer tracking of the envelope which we opted for. Of course we had a tracking number but no instructions on how to check on it. After some follow up surfing of the web I figured that out, so no big deal. Getting over that hurdle brought us back to fax issue. In the interim we had downloaded Skype to our iPad so we didn't have to enlist our friends assistance again. We went to a local place that had free wifi and we had seen others using Skype there so we figured the connection would suffuce. The connection turned out to be just good enough to get IRS representative to note in our file that we had faxed our response and to ask if they had received it. This is when we were told that we would have to wait three weeks to find that out. All I could think of at that point its tick, tick, tick with each tick garnering us more interest and penalties. But, we had to let it go as there wasn't a thing we could do about it. As I write this we are still in the waiting stage so end of this post will have to come somewhere in the future.