Interesting thought, what to do if the tax office gives you more that they should? In the recent round of tax manual fileings there was an instruction to total tax instalments paid and write that total in a field of the form not intended for that purpose. The assumption being that the printer had left out a line on the form. My daughter has just received a refund of twice the amount paid and the implications of this are that, if all users of the form did the same, there may be many such refunds and the tax office pursuing tax payers for overpaid refunds..

Fortunately because many fileings are electronic the problem only affects a small number of tax payers, or does it? Are there millions of dud tax returns out there?

with a simple flat tax there would not be such confusion ,and probably there would be a need for a lot fewer tax collectors.

Paid preparers don't seem to have that problem, here Clete.

with a simple flat tax there would not be such confusion ,and probably there would be a need for a lot fewer tax collectors.

The rate of tax has nothing to do with the problem Tom, in fact, the rate in this case is zero because she is below the threshold. The problem exists because instructions and the form don't match

Tal most people who prepare returns don't have the problem but when the income is small you can't afford a paid preparer and to top it off she will have to file an amended return

Cheaper to do it right the first time. Lack of training or fault tools are rather expensive. Hmmm... some training may lead to more income and the added benefit of a more accurate return?

Not sure about how it works where you live, but in the US if the Internal Revenue Service makes a mistake and sends a larger than appropriate refund they will eventually catch up with it and demand repayment. It may take over a year to figure it out, but eventually they will. To make matters worse, they may also tack on interest penalty of 1/2% per month from the time the over-payment was made to the time it is repaid. In other words - if the IRS makes a mistake it's your fault.

Yes it works the same all over