Doesn't it just make your day when you get your mail and it's a notice from the IRS?
In this case, it turns out there was a query on our 2002 tax return alleging that we underreported our income by $308,000. Why, you inquire curiously, did the IRS think we had underreported our 2002 income by $308,000? Because, dear reader, when we had to file bankruptcy and lost our house, GMAC misreported the payoff of our mortgage through the short sale not as "debt paid off" but as "debt cancelled." They also neglected to inform the IRS that this was a real estate mortgage. The consequence of this is that, because of GMAC misreporting it, the IRS now considered that paid-off $308,000 debt (paid off not by us, but by the new owners of our house) as income.
It's straightened out now, and we should have a notice in the mail (in 6 to 8 weeks, the IRS rep told me) stating that it has in fact been corrected, that no changes were made to our return, and we do not owe any tax. (Which is just as well, because $308,000 of income would probably put us in about the 40% tax bracket, which would be $100,000 to $120,000 of tax, and it'd take a damned long time to pay that off considering that our total documented income last year was $330.)
One way or another, considering the number of times GMAC screwed up, stalled, and/or threw deliberate obstables in our way at the time, and now this, I'm seriously starting to wonder whether this misreporting was intentional and malicious. As the saying goes (variously attributed to Ian Fleming and Al Capone), "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
We're now wondering whether, should we ever manage to buy a house again, we can manage to get a clause inserted into the loan agreement stating that the loan may not be resold to GMAC or any subsidiary thereof. Because if these people aren't actively malicious, the only other possible conclusion is that they're totally fucking incompetent.
