Mother feels she’s ‘hit rock bottom’ after spending 3 years trying to fix IRS mix-up declaring her dead

By Ali Bauman

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    DARIEN, Connecticut (WCBS) — A Connecticut mother says she is considered dead to the IRS, and it is ruining her life.

Jackie Cassidy is a single mother of four from Darien, and she is very much alive.

“I don’t know where to turn,” she told CBS2’s Ali Bauman.

Cassidy’s husband passed away in 2017. She filed the paperwork to update the IRS, then, the following year, she filed her own taxes.

“Within two weeks’ time, I get a letter. ‘We cannot process your return. The person sending this is deceased,’” Cassidy said.

She immediately contacted the IRS to clarify the mix-up.

“No one could give me any leads or any direction as to how to solve such a travesty,” she said.

She has sent them every form of identification possible.

“Passport, license. I have done this numerous times with complete inertia,” Cassidy said.

She even got the Social Security Administration to verify that she is alive, but that didn’t work either. She received a letter saying, “You are not known as deceased.”

She has now been going through this each year for the past three years.

“A lot of security questions come my way. I’m conjecturing that because they think that I’m dead, they may not trust who I am, asking these questions,” Cassidy said.

In the meantime, she’s paid her taxes, without receiving any refunds, and she missed out on two stimulus checks that she qualified for.

“I desperately could use that,” she said.

Now, she can’t even apply for financial aid for her daughter’s college tuition.

“The financial aid requires that you have a processed tax return,” Cassidy said. “Can this be rectified?”

CBS2 has been asking the IRS repeatedly on Cassidy’s behalf why this is taking so long to resolve and what the protocol is for anyone in this situation, but the IRS’ only response is that federal law prohibits them from commenting on specific taxpayer matters.

“I just feel somewhat as though I’ve hit rock bottom,” Cassidy said.

Someone from the IRS told us they would look into Cassidy’s case. We will continue to press them until Cassidy is brought back from the dead.

Cassidy has also been working with the Connecticut Taxpayers Advocate Office, but so far, they have not been able to make progress with the IRS either.

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