Bureaucracy Blues

A couple of months ago I received from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department a very polite letter claiming they had no information regarding an old state income tax filing of mine and suggesting that I probably owed them money because, hey, they had no evidence that I didn't and, by the way, they had destroyed all the old documents going back including from the year they were now interested in.

Unfortunately, because half my paperwork was left behind when I moved to Florida, I also had no evidence that I didn't. And I don't.

I contacted my former employer back in Utah and, after some searching around, they were kind enough* to send a copy of my W2 from the relevant year with which I was able to cobble together an ersatz return I hoped would complete the records held by the state that they could then destroy since they were beyond the official "keep until" date. As long as they made themselves happy first.

Unfortunately, I never noticed (because I didn't think such a thing was even possible) the replacement W2 the old employer sent me, although having the right year on it, had the (substantially different) income numbers from the previous year. How is that possible? They swear they simply pulled it from my file**.

The State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department has now contacted me a second time to inform me that the numbers I submitted with my ersatz return don't even come close to the numbers on my Federal return. They want to adjust the numbers up to match, which is reasonable. And they're still being extraordinarily polite.

Unfortunately, the Federal return doesn't show the amount of tax withheld by the state and adjusting the income numbers up without also adjusting the state withholding will result in a very large (and not at all reasonable) tax liability for me.

I have now requested my former employer to send me copies of all my W2s so I can figure out what happened and how to build an argument acceptable to the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division. Politely, of course.

*Technically, they're legally obligated to provide it but they were very nice about it all considering it's not really their problem.
** O.K., now it is at least partially their problem.