IRS has happily kept thousands of dollars of my money when I filed incorrectly. A few years later I went to the IRS office for an unrelated matter and I asked t

IRS has happily kept thousands of dollars of my money when I filed incorrectly. A few years later I went to the IRS office for an unrelated matter and I asked the agent “can you look up year XXXX and see if I was owed a refund?” Agent looks up and says yup, you were owed a large refund. Too late to get it back now, but we strongly encourage you to correctly refile your taxes for that year. So they had done my taxes and knew they owed me money and, basically, stole my money. If I owed them money they would have immediately hit me with a bill or an audit. And on top of it they wanted me to refile my taxes “correctly” after they had already done my taxes. This “do your thing and we’ll do it, too, and we’ll see if you got it wrong” is one of the most stressful aspects of American bureaucracy.