HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — He had been waiting years for his refund — admittedly, partly because of events (like the death of his brother) even worse than a missing tax refund — but less than a month after Ryan Crossley called abc27 News, he has his money plus interest.
Crossley has high-functioning autism. He’s particularly good at some things. Phone calls aren’t one of those things. So he asked his mom, Gloria Leeper, to join him on a speakerphone call to try to get help from the IRS. Crossley and Leeper said Crossley provided all the necessary identifying information to authenticate himself and disclosed that Leeper was on the call and why.
But the agent, Crossley and Leeper said, said Crossley was being “coached” and hung up on him — a clear failure to accommodate an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-covered disability (autism), as far as they were concerned.
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Crossley contacted abc27 News, which contacted the IRS. IRS officials said privacy rules prevented them from comment about Crossley’s case — or even whether there was an open case for him or any other taxpayer — but Crossley soon heard from someone in the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service.
“Things moved quite quickly,” Crossley said Thursday. “I spoke to the tax advocate down in the Philly office, and she assured me that everything would be looked into. And within about a week and a half, I looked into the account the other day and was quite surprised to see my payment sitting there. So I finally have the money that was missing and owed to me.”
Plus interest, to be more precise: A $1,765 deposit last week for the $1,502 that went missing in 2022.
“I’d like to say ‘thank you’ to the Taxpayer Advocate Service at the IRS for jumping on the case and handling it speedily as they did,” Crossley said. “I want to thank [reporter Seth Kaplan] and [videographer] Zack [Lang] for coming out to the house and taking up my case like you guys did. It definitely helped to make me feel heard and understood — helped me feel like I was getting a fair shake, for once. And I want to thank abc27 for allowing you guys to do what you guys do, because it definitely is a help to people like me.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-29 13:23:00
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