Well the unfortunate signs are in, Illinois is so desperate for cash and is looking in all of the wrong places, including making up liabilities.
I just finished a letter to the Illinois Department of Revenue; they send a notice to my client claiming that they were not paying in their Illinois payroll withholding taxes. Now this client just launched their website. They have been procrastinating on implementing their business plan. So there has been no revenue, as we have been reporting every month to IDOR on the ST-1. So obviously to Illinois this means that they have multiple employees and that the company is not sending in the withholding taxes.
My biggest concern at this point for this client is that the state will try to levy the accounts of the company for these factitious monies owed.
Now I have a different client that was concerned about an estimated statement sent to them from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). Now every required statement was filed and paid as necessary in a timely fashion. But what the IDES did was to send them an estimated statement for the time before their payroll had actually started.
Unfortunately the client was concerned over the threatened penalties and interest to be charged and paid the statement without consulting my office. Once I received the notice during my quarterly visit, I reviewed their records and let the client know that the estimated liability was bogus, they had no employees at the time period estimated in the notice. So, I wrote a letter requesting a refund. I doubt that the client will get a refund. I am concerned that they will not even respond to the letter, it has been a while now. At best I expect that the client will receive a credit to be taken at some point in the distant future.
To all who get notices, send them to my office for review before paying. It is probably that the monies are not owed if you filed all of your required forms and paid the balances owed. If in doubt give us a call.