The saying goes: Nothing’s certain but death and taxes. But Phil Anderson’s story may make you question both after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mistakenly declared him dead.
“It bothers me at work. It bothers me in my sleep,” said Anderson, reading a recent letter addressed to him and his wife. “It says, ‘Phil C. Anderson DECD.’ They told me that means I’m deceased. Last time I checked, and in the immortal words of Monty Python, ‘I’m not dead yet!'”
While he can joke now, this all started with tragedy. Anderson’s daughter, who had cystic fibrosis, died in November 2022.
“She was a fighter and a wonderful person, and everybody she knew, somehow, she touched,” he said.
Anderson said the IRS somehow switched his Social Security number with hers, meaning the agency thought that he was the one who died. His Colorado tax accounts have been locked, and he hasn’t received his state refunds in two years (even though taxes are still taken out of every paycheck).
“They’ve had over a year to fix this, and they are still dragging their feet,” Anderson said. “My biggest concern is how far and how deep is this going to go. When is my Medicaid going to get shut off? I’m getting ready to retire. Is that going to be a big problem? Yeah, this has morphed into a big mushroom cloud.”