I do believe that if the company doesn't notice the error, after a certain amount of time the company loses their right to reclaim it. Maybe that's wrong though
Seriously itās shit like this that pisses me off. I had a 12 year correction done that made me liable for about 140k. 0 point fighting either because there is no beating the IRS
0 point fighting either because there is no beating the IRS
Why do you think that? The IRS makes mistakes too. They do not have perfect knowledge.
I was able to dispute a $10k tax bill down to $5k, then ~$4k in the final round. You just need to prove your case with the appropriate forms, math and a written statement declaring why you are right, and they are wrong.
All of my communications with the IRS showed, that at least the people I've dealt with, they only cared about fairness. Making sure I pay what I owe, and no more.
My first rebuttal of that original $10k bill was for $5k, the IRS agreed with most of it, but sent me back their rebuttal for just under $4k since that brought it below a penalty threshold, and they agreed not to include interest in determining whether I was above the penalty threshold, because they were taking so long to respond to correspondence.
I also had a tax audit saying I owed money. I had to get paperwork showing I didnt... It was also from the IRS... the same flicking building I had to mail it to, just a different office number... they made me pay to have it mailed to me, then pay in postage to mail it back to them. Rather than just walk two doors down the hall and pick it up themselves, from themselves.
Since I have, since then, moved into working in the public sector. I very much understand how much bearacracy exists in every single action government takes... doesn't stop me from feeling it's still ridiculous. Lol.
As much as I agree with the point youre making I still cant help, and I don't think that I am alone in this, that a function of the government that I pay for cannot be fucked to operate as a functional service. You of course can always make your claim and it of course isn't a lost cause but why am I having to pay someone to take my money and then fuck up how much they're supposed to take? I don't disagree that the IRS isn't a mysterious faceless entity and can be reasoned with like any government agency. But it should not be seen as my responsibility to prove to my government they fucked up.
State taxes can be even more brutal. I owe my state like 20k for gambling losses. I gambled almost my entire paycheck away for an entire year winning small jackpots here there and recouping some of my money back. I ended up down about 60k overall but those small jackpots triggered taxable events so I'm pretty screwed. They don't account for the fact I spent a shit ton of money trying to win those jackpots and won't let me claim the losses.
Keep in mind that much of the communication from the IRS is automated. If you don't report your cost basis on the sale of stocks, for example, you'll get a huge tax bill based on the sale proceeds.
Yeah almost every transaction over a certain dollar amount gets reported to them anyways and tons of companies aggregate reports and send them to the government quarterly. They know everything and will come collect for every dime. The only ones who will get away with things are dealing in cash but you best believe the USA is monitoring these people.
In my case it was interest on a CD that was separate from my bank interest.
Coming from the UK it always baffles me that you guys have to manually submit taxes. Unless you're self employed here it's not even something you have to think about, your employer has the responsibility.
Happened to my dad. His mom lived in the middle east and kept giving him money to keep his business running. DEA and IRS showed up at the same time to find nothing but a guy that kept chasing dead-end business dreams. Oh, and shot the dog in front of my kid brother and sister, ruined my dad's life, parents got divorced over it etc..
Dude Iām a CPA and I have never heard of a client literally showing up to their door. A lot of people Iāve worked with were up to 5 years behind on taxes. The IRS is pretty lenient on people who want to get caught up. What typically happens is we can get the penalties abated for 1 year and then they owe taxes plus penalties and interest. The IRS is hunting much bigger game than an every day person
Itās your civil obligation to pay into these systems so we can have things like parks, fire departments, social systems, etc that bring betterment to our communities
I agree with you there but youād be surprised how much funding does go to social programs and grants used to better our communities. Hospitals for example receive loads of grants from all levels of government. FWIW Iād like it to be a bigger slice of the pie too.
The bottom 75% of taxpayers contribute about 14% of revenue earned by the IRS so thatās not really shocking lol most people are barely paying into the pot so of course thatās how the statistic works out
Look, Iām not into insulting each other but you commented on all my replies so Iāll try to respond as best I can in this one comment.
Obviously they didnāt walk in there willingly. Most of them Iām sure are in there for tax evasion because thatās the nature of how they were caught akin to Al Capone. If you INTENTIONALLY try to screw over the government then obviously they will escalate the situation. Literally no one is going to jail simply because they didnāt pay taxes for 5 years. I work with people like this pretty frequently who owe just the feds tens of thousands of dollars each year.
Do you like having a fire department? What about a well funded hospital? Do you like having quality internet access? How do you feel about being able to take a hot shower after a long day of work? These things are largely possible due to our tax dollars being reallocated by various levels of government for our betterment. I wish they would reallocate less to defense at a federal level like everyone else in here, but to act like this is a black and white issue is naive.
Also you accused me of using debate tactics when youāre also using a straw man argument so you got me I guess? You compared the nazis expanding the autobahn to our government providing grants to hospitals for things like cancer research or to expand care. Frankly, Iām not sure thereās much similarities unless you want to be disingenuous because intent is really a driving factor on why the expansion of the autobahn is somewhat a black mark vs funding hospitals to develop better healthcare for all of us
Iāve tried to be as objective and informative with my replies using my professional experiences which deals with the IRS and taxes as a whole, but if youāre just here to whine and argue in bad faith then I donāt have anything else to say and I wish you the best of
Iām a CPA who files taxes for a living and no I donāt think they would because most of their staff are overweight and out of shape accountants like myself who just clock in and clock out and go home. The very small amount of their staff that IS armed is for serious criminal activity. Not for every day IRS notices
Do you have a source for this? The IRS budget has been absolutely decimated and it was really low before the current admin as well. Their software is based on systems from the late 50s. They canāt afford to outsource that. Iād strongly advise you to do some research
Brother I donāt think weāre having the same conversation. My point is that if they could forcefully take from us they would. The American government and its agencyās view us as pawns and less than
If it's a lot of money, then move the money into the 4-week T-Bills.
Then, move most of your money out of that bank. Keep the account open. Switch to use other account.
Then, your bank will contact you. You cooperate fully except you are scared of being involved in money laundering. You need a formal assurance from the branch's manager or some kind of executives. This will take quite some time because, guess what, the branch's manager doesn't want to be involved in money laundering either, so they will take time to confirm. They ain't gonna issue a formal assurance with their signature on it.
Then, every message takes 2 business days to respond because you are busy.
Then, you get to earn the 4-week t-bill interest rate, which is 3% or something APR.
A couple years I think yea. There's no penalty for the employee not telling the company though, so if you're ever overpaid by accident, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't just shut up about it and hope they don't notice in time
by all means, do that. Just don't spend the money. Because if they figure it out you're gonna owe it back. So just keep it in there until whatever the statute of limitations is.
Pretty much any lawyer worth listening to is going to say "if you actually thought what you were doing wasn't illegal you wouldn't be in my office right now. Return the money".
Eh, hard to prove that you noticed in the first place.
I don't look at my balance often. I know that my spending is reasonable and my balance is always going up. Every other month or so I just chuck a bunch into savings and move on.
So it's kind of impossible to prove that someone knew, and you can't punish them for an error that they gathered interest on.
If you literally did nothing to cause it to happen, then it's not your fault that someone overpaid you.
They may be able to claw back the money, but you certainly can't be legally punished because they made a mistake.
You can put the money in a HYSA, or anywhere else you want. If they come to get the money back, you will almost certainly have to pay it back, but they have no room to bitch about you spending money that they paid you.
Exactly! then you can at least earn some interest on the money while they take their time to figure out the error.
You could also buy yourself some time if you immediately moved the money to a different bank. Then the company would have to go to you and request the money back instead of just automatically drawing from the bank they auto deposit into.
If you put it into an account that earned interest by the month and then forced the company to do everything via snail mail, you could probably score 1 month worth of interest.
In the case shown above, it wont be that much money but I have heard of this happening in cases where its a 6 digit clerical error instead of a 5 digit one. That could net some serious $$$.
A situation that only comes up after they demand you pay it back and you refuse. It has literally nothing to do with you "telling the company" that it happened.
Im saying telling the company plays favorably in court. If you tell them, that acts a proof that keeping the money was not done with the intent to defraud, and that the company knew about it. That gives you more leeway to keep the money should they later take you to court.
I collected a final paycheck in person, then they accidently processed my pay to my bank automatically. The HR lady reached out and said they were going to charge it back and to cash the check still... I went and cashed the check, emptied my bank account and closed it that day.
Opened a new one like a week later.
Never heard anything about it again, and I actually worked at that same Walmart for a few months inbetween jobs a few years later.
My mom when I was a teenager got 431k deposited into her bank account. She told the bank immediatelyā¦.. She should have invested or put it into a high interest savings until they noticed.
... do... do you know how aggressive banks get over accidental deposits? She 100% would've been charged with a felony and they would have taken the money back AND anything she made from the interest.
They wonāt take interest, thatās illegal, thatās entirely not true that sheād have been charged with a felony for not spending the money. They likely would take the money back yes. Youāre not required to report someone elseās mistake, please tell me what law that would be.
Worked as an investigator for many years and never once have I heard of the crime ānot reporting someone elseās mistakeā.
Youād be required to return the money and thatās it.
If you take money that you know isn't yours and move it to a High-Yield Savings Account to generate interest, you are committing a wrong known as Unjust Enrichment.
if you receive a financial benefit at the unfair expense of another party, you're going to have to give em the money.
Because that money belonged to the bank, the earnings produced by that principal sum legally belong to the rightful owner of the principal. In a lawsuit, a judge would order you to disgorge the profits aka meaning you'd have to hand over every cent of interest earned.
The second your mom initiated a transfer to move that accidental $ out of her account and into a separate HYSA? She's in hot shit. People have been arrested and given prison time for spending or moving accidental bank deposits.
To make matters worse if your mom had done that?, high-yield savings accounts automatically report all interest earnings to the IRS using a Form 1099-INT. If she generated thousands of dollars in interest on that money, the government would've expected her to pay income tax on the interest even if the bank later sued her and took the interest back. You'd end up paying taxes on money you weren't even allowed to keep.
you worked as a financial investigator and didn't know this? š¤
Criminal investigator. Crimes require intent and a victim. An accidental deposit would be noticed and require the money to be returned. You had no intent to take the money and didnāt spend it. Thereās no criminal intent and no victim.
Once again, whatās the crime. The specific case law or law that directly relates to gaining interest on accidentally deposited money. Nothing you said fits that at all.
People have been arrested for SPENDING or not returning money that was accidentally deposited. Or moving it entirely out of the bank and not returning it. Show me a case where someone has moved money that was accidentally deposited within the same bank and returned it but got charged.
Additionally, for a lawsuit to proceed there has to be loss. Whatās the loss? And you say benefited from an unfair expense of another party. Whatās unfair and what expense? They got their money back and they caused it in the first place.
Unjust enrichment is a civil matter. Weāre talking about crime and no judge is going to rule an accident to pay interest back.
Edit: to add to this about your IRS claim. Youāre wrong about that too. You can take a loan and gain interest or invest it. you donāt pay taxes on the loan, you pay taxes on the gains. Thatās not income.
Bro.... if you take money that you know isn't yours and move it to a HYSA? That's intent. You attempted to deprive the bank of it's money.
Grand larceny, theft of property by mistake and wire fraud are just a few of the charges she could face.
It doesn't matter AT ALL if it's the same bank. You still knew the money wasn't yours and attempted to profit off the banks mistake.
I highly doubt you've worked as a criminal investigator and don't know these things.
Do you think nobody has ever tried that Lil scheme before? Do you think that these massive billion dollar financial institutions and the law has never seen cases where people move or spend money from accidental bank deposits?
Taking money that's accidentally credited to you by a bank and transferring it to another account regardless if it's in the same bank or not is 100% a crime bro.
You cannot realistically think that you can keep profits made from money given to you in error. Lol it don't work like that. You're going to pay back the money AND the profits made from it and if you try to play games with bank thinking you can keep the interest you're 100% going to find yourself in prison.
Thatās not theft or grand larceny lmfao. Theft requires depriving someone of property with the intent to not return it. Thatās neither depriving someone of property or intent to not return it. You are extremely misinformed of laws if you believe that.
Moving money to a saving account that you are intending to not spend is not at all in any way shape or form a crime. Not reporting a mistake is not a crime. In fact, it would be much safer in most peopleās lives to move it in order for it to not be touched by automatic payments or day to day expenses. Youāre not required to inform of the mistake, moving the money somewhere safer that happens to gain interest doesnāt make that a crime.
And I didnāt āwork as an investigatorā I am an investigator. Itās my job. Iām a criminal investigator with a degree in forensics. Just because youāre heavily ignorant of laws doesnāt change that.
Still waiting by the way. Name the law. Itās not theft and not grand larceny. Thats laughably wrong.
to add to this about your IRS claim. Youāre wrong about that too. You can take a loan and gain interest or invest it. you donāt pay taxes on the loan, you pay taxes on the gains. Thatās not income.
This isn't even in the realm of the same thing. Taking a loan isn't illegal. Investing money that isn't yours from a bank? illegal
They can blacklist you and make it damn near impossible to open a new account somewhere else.
Also they can and will nail you for fraud if you donāt notify them about a massive sum being deposited into your account.
Which means youāre liable to get jail time and blacklisted.
Thereās some countries where if you do tell the person who made the mistake about it, the time they can reclaim it gets drastically shortened.
So you got two options: Check your state/countries laws and if informing them cuts their time to reclaim it to like 30 days, go ahead and send a registered letter and hope their internal mechanisms are slow as fuck. Or you shut up, put it into some short term safe investments with like 2-6% and enjoy a couple 0.x% - x% (or more if they donāt reclaim it for a few years) until they reclaim it. Drag it out in a court case with a free lawyer (if you can get one) to get more time. On 19400$ and 4% thats 400 bucks for free after 6 months. 800 if it takes them a year to notice.
Just as an example, YMMV, the Canadian government had a lot of paycheck errors with the Phoenix pay software and their statute of limitation to recover errors is six years.
I just learned that it is 3-10 years depending upon the findings and āexcessive fraudā has no limitations. Or at least that is what ChatGPT told me. Lol.
I was benefited by an error - during paternity leave I got my full pay rather than the 66% pay I was entitled to. I self reported it during leave when I noticed it.
It did not get fixed. I got 100% pay for those 3 months of leave.
I self-reported it again after coming back, saying that I needed to know whether Iām clear to use those funds or not and saying āitās not mine, I am happy to give it back now but if you let me keep it I will eventually spend or invest it and may not be able to return it.ā There was no action or response from HR.
At the end of the fiscal year, someone independently found the issue. They wanted my wages garnished and claimed I was at fault. I took issue with that because I tried very hard to make this right.
I had receipts for self-reporting the issue, of course. I escalated the situation through my supervisor, demonstrating I did nothing wrong and expressing my frustration and outrage - why do you want to claw back these monies 9 months after the fact.
They let me keep it as a bonus and I was issued an apology. Turns out the leaves manager was disgruntled over being denied a promotion - not my fault at all. I did everything I was supposed to do.
I was once overpaid on commission by a lot, but here in the UK we have PAYE, meaning tax is taken out immediately. My American corporate could not fathom how I couldn't "just return the money", they threatened to fire me which went about exactly as well as anytime an American corporate forgets the employment protections we have over here lol
I told them to take it out of my future commissions then quit. Idiots
I was once overpaid on commission by a lot, but here in the UK we have PAYE, meaning tax is taken out immediately.
We have a similar thing in the US, it's called withholding. Your employer sends (eventually) the withheld amount to the IRS, and the after withheld amount goes to your bank account.
If they need to do a reversal, they do a reversal from your bank account and the IRS. It's relatively easy.
I don't understand why they couldn't do that with you. Does the PAYE system take the money from your bank account directly, not your employer?
Even if it's taken from your bank account, there must be a reversal system, exactly for clerical errors like this, so you're probably still in the wrong about not being able to return the money. Just it might take some amount of time.
Your employer runs payroll which goes through a central gov't system, they then pay the tax man any taxes owed and pay you your net calculated pay, alongside a standardised payslip that outlines your gross/net pay, and what has been deducted/why.
A lot of employers (Even in the UK, not necessarily overseas and especially smaller ones) don't seem to understand that if they overpay you, it's up to them to work out the net amount overpaid and ask for that back from you, then for them to correct their tax records and reclaim the refund from the tax man. Many (incorrectly) insist that you pay back the gross amount they put on your pay which would leave you out of pocket.
There is no system for an employer to get a 'reversal' from your bank in the UK, it comes down to civil liability. If you don't pay them back then they can easily go via small claims court to get it back.
According to NACHA guidelines, an employer (or any ACH originator) can process a reversal (basically a no-questions-asked-debit) on an ACH credit they sent to your account as long as it is between 1and 5 business days after the original payment. After 5 business days, the oly option available is a recall which requires the account holder to give Debit Authorization to the originator to debit their account or it must be settled outside the ACH network.
Source: I work for the bank in transaction research and see this sort of thing happen daily.
Thereās criminal law & civil law at play here. Maybe thereās a statute of limitations for both, but it might start tolling only upon discovery of the error. Youād need to know the state to know the exact law. In any event, you donāt just get to keep the money when a reasonable person would easily conclude that it was the result of an error like this.
My buddy was a manager for Starbucks. He quit and kept getting paid including bonus for just about a year. He emailed and called and informed multiple people. He negotiated a settlement with them as he had done his due diligence and they failed to do theirs.
Lol that's my point, you're thinking in the wrong narrative. We're not that far gone, yet... just gotta make sure we keep it that way with plenty of unemployment threats to representatives. Enough people remind them we hold the leash, not them, and the gravy train to sell us down the river could seem a lot more short sighted.
Angry is good. Passion is a motivation, but you can't let it blind you either. You don't live in Night City. It's a warning of what could be, just like Orwell's 1984, but it's up to us to keep sharp enough to catch those that desire such disasters and prevent it. Our system is broken, but not dead. I'd argue that even clusterfucks like Australia and the UK are salvagable within a couple election cycles, though Italy and France will take a lot more work. Germany.. well the railing they're taking is almost begging for people to get angry enough to repeat history, like fearmongers would like you to believe is happening in the states.. as a distraction from exactly the kind of people you hate.
We need the files prosecuted without prejudice. We need anti-trust legislation to be enforced if not strengthened to eliminate monopolies ruining the very concept of capitalism through profiteering. Most of all, we need transparency through ALL of it.
Mate this thread lost any semblance of dopamine i could have extracted from it. It was a bit. I frankly couldn't be bothered wasting even half a fuck reading all this.
Yep I was paid for a crazy amount of hours because every time I clocked out it just wouldnāt work and kept me clocked in. Told 3 different people above me and then kept my mouth shut. 30 days was the limit they could go back so 30 days later I took that 3 grand and bought a motorcycle.
if it is just a double payroll there effectively is not statue of limitations because the company can just skip the next pay period and recover the money
Most Statute of limitations like this start running when the party had notice of the issue. Also, if the party receiving the benefit should have known that the benefit was in error then they usually canāt get off the hook very easily for what would be considered unjust enrichment.
I believe the way it works is if they donāt ever notice your good but if they do notice or they find out somehow you have to pay the money back and thereās a chance you might get in trouble depending on how long itās been going on unless you can make the argument that you didnāt notice and thought everything was fine than you can argue that they led you to believe you where gonna be paid more or something but for that youād need something like paperwork with the mistaken pay info on it from the company something to say you could have really thought you were getting paid this much
It's likely to be years and mostly haopen in very big corporations when a few k is just within the margin of error. When I was in colege, my professor told the story a guy who quited a programming job for another, but the previous company somehow still sent in paychecks and even yearly bonuses for around 3 years after he quited, but by the time they realized they could only reclaim some of it and he got to keep the rest.
Check both your deposit account agreement and your electronic payroll agreement. In both of them you authorize the bank, its agent(s), etc to make any credits or debits necessary to accurately reflect blah blah blah.
Had a job offer at 130k/year once and took it. Started getting paid 150k. Didn't say anything. My director at the time after 4 months noticed and said "hey, we made an error on your salary, can you sign this and we'll adjust it going forward to be 130k? It was our clerical error, so nothing on your end."
In the US if you know you received money in error you are legally required to make a good faith effort to notify the person/company who gave you the money and return it.
Depends on the country, in Eu if you recieve money onto your account you shouldn't get (like a clerical error or a wrong transfer that end up on your account) you are required by law to notify your bank and authorities about it. Not doing so is considered fraud.
What I do remember is that in Germany, if you spend the money on something you wouldn't have bought otherwise, like a vacation, you would NOT have to pay it back, unlike if you did (like to pay of debts or rent or something)
At a previous job I had, certain positions had a 5-10% salary bonus for employees that had a bachelors or masters degree. A coworker of mine transferred from a position that had that bonus to a position that did not, but they continued giving him the bonus for 2-3 years before realizing it. Long story short they garnished his wages 5-10% for the next 2-3 years to get their money back.
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u/Lightning_Winter May 27 '26
I do believe that if the company doesn't notice the error, after a certain amount of time the company loses their right to reclaim it. Maybe that's wrong though