What’s often billed as a friendly, no-appointment-needed, walk-in Saturday at the IRS turned into a stand in line, a frustratingly long line, a stretching down Michigan Avenue kind of a line, in downtown Detroit.
Hundreds of people stood outside for five hours or more and drew Detroit police presence, as well as a few officers wearing jackets marked as Homeland Security and IRS Criminal Investigations.
Dozens of people — some who brought their lawn chairs and fleece blankets, others who had their toddlers in tow — arrived at ungodly hours for in-person help at Internal Revenue Service offices in the McNamara Federeal Building at 477 Michigan Ave.
The second Detroiter in line — who asked not to be named — said he arrived at 10 p.m. Friday to grab his spot. The third man — who also did not disclose his name — said he arrived at midnight. They saved the spot for the first person in line who apparently was taking a break at around 8:15 a.m. when I arrived and began talking to people.
The IRS would start seeing people at 9 a.m. Saturday. And yes, many would end up being turned away.
As of 9 a.m., a young woman found herself at the end of the very long line, which then stopped at the end of the block at Third Street and Michigan Avenue. Later in the morning, according to the IRS, the line was expanding farther down Michigan Avenue.
Many say IRS told them they must visit Detroit office in person
All the people who would talk to me — and some would not — told me they were at the IRS building to verify their identities. Some tried to do so over the phone but were told that they needed to show up in person. Some filed their 2023 tax returns in February but couldn’t get their refunds until they verified their IDs. They were still waiting for refunds in late May. They wanted their money.
Nothing had changed about their tax situations, according to some, still working at the same jobs, still making the same kind of money. One man who also declined to give his name said he worked for the city of Detroit.
“I never had this problem, never, ever,” said one person in line who worked the same job for 22 years.
“We got to sit out here like animals in a line,” said Pia Smith, who said she arrived at “3 a.m., baby.”
She needs to get her identity verified to free up her tax refund and hoped to get the task done during the 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. hours of service Saturday. Smith couldn’t get help at another Saturday walk-in event earlier this year when she recalled freezing in line, waiting and being out of luck.
The IRS had four special Saturday, no-appointment-needed events this tax season, February, March, April and May. Typically, IRS taxpayer assistance centers are open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and will work with taxpayers by appointment only. To make an appointment, you’d call 844-545-5640.
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Much confusion about why tax refunds aren’t arriving
Lattrell Mapp — who arrived around 3:15 a.m. to verify her identity — was still waiting for her tax refund for her 2023 return, as well as her 2022 refund. Together, she says she’s owed about $19,000 for the two tax refunds. She filed her 2023 taxes in February. “I worked two jobs,” she said, both involve W-2s, including one from the post office. She’s had trouble paying her bills, including rent.
“All my stuff fell behind because the government is messing around with my money,” Mapp said.
Later Saturday afternoon after she met with an IRS employee in Detroit, she said she was told that she’d need to amend last year’s return to resolve some issues.
Many people are now stressed out over their taxes, even though the IRS had a fairly good season, as a result of ID theft and, and the IRS said, the fact that many taxpayers appear to be victims of some terrible tax advice.
To be sure, the IRS has been criticized in the past for taking too long to issue refunds to victims of identity theft. Nearly 500,000 people who had cases still pending with the IRS’s Identity Theft Victims Assistance unit at the end of 2023 found themselves waiting an average of 19 months for the IRS to resolve their problems, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins stated in her 2023 Annual Report to Congress in January.
Collins then called the delays “unconscionable.”
To top it off this year, the IRS stated on May 14 that thousands of taxpayers filed inflated refund claims on 2023 returns and some taxpayers may be “scam victims” if they improperly claimed some obscure but now misused tax credits. “Given the questionable nature of many of these claims, the IRS has frozen the refunds for these taxpayers,” according to the IRS release.
Many times, returns that try to inflate refunds aren’t signed by the tax preparers, which is a huge red flag when it comes to potential fraud. The IRS said that many people in this situation will need to file an amended return to remove credits that they aren’t eligible for to avoid potential penalties.
Luis Garcia, a spokesperson for the IRS in Detroit, said about 99% of the people in line in Detroit Saturday were there to get their IDs verified.
“The IRS believes many of the people in line Saturday ultimately may turn out to be scam victims who have been misled by social media or ghost preparers to try claim big refunds — sometimes in the five figures — they aren’t eligible for,” Garcia said.
The IRS has not found an unusual or correlating rise in identity theft, he added.
Several taxpayers I talked with early Saturday morning said they’re not sure what’s going on, and they didn’t believe they wrongly claimed any credits.
“This is ridiculous,” said Charlene Smith, of Detroit, who stood in line Saturday to verify her identity. “Why would I lie?”
Smith, who grabbed her spot at 4 a.m. Saturday, said she’s never had to verify her identity in the past. She heard about the event from her tax preparer.
Ages range from 17 to 75 for those who need to verify ID
Lori Young, 63, drove roughly an hour on Saturday to the Detroit IRS office on Michigan Avenue from Clay Township near Algonac with her granddaughter Audrey Young, 17, who received an IRS 4883C letter related to identity theft.
Her grandmother tried to help her, by calling the IRS number. After all, the 17-year-old wasn’t all that sure what to say or do. But Audrey needed to talk to the IRS employee herself and was later told she needed to be seen in person.
Audrey Young had taxes withheld when she worked at Club Capri Restaurant in Algonac, as a cook who often made pizzas for $12 an hour. She’s a first-time tax filer who said she had taxes withheld from her checks. She believes she’s owed about $700 for her tax refund. She has a driver’s permit, not a full driver’s license. She couldn’t verify her ID on the IRS site.
Audrey and her grandmother Lori couldn’t snag an appointment in Detroit. At one point, Lori Young said, the IRS offered to look for possible appointment times in Flint, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, or Toledo. “I stopped it at that,” the grandmother said, “and said, ‘We’re not going to Ohio.’ “
The walk-in Saturdays were mentioned. The family drove to the one in Detroit in April, but the lines were way too long then and they drove home. They arrived at 8 a.m. Saturday but were still very far down the block minutes before 9 a.m.
As a backup, Audrey Young kept an appointment July 15 in the Flint office, an appointment that would be canceled if they could verify her ID Saturday.
On Sunday, though, Lori Young shared some good news with me. After nearly six hours outside in line, Lori and her granddaughter Audrey got into the IRS building at 1:45 p.m. Saturday. They went through security, filled out some paperwork, and were assigned a number, No. 480.
Then, they waited another hour and 15 minutes to be escorted to the fifth floor.
At about 3:30 p.m., she said, they met with an IRS employee. Audrey’s identity was verified, Lori Young told me. They expect that Audrey could receive a refund in about three weeks to nine weeks.
Many people recall seeing long lines for concert tickets, newly released sneakers, the latest Apple iPhones. But seeing crowds line up to see the IRS?
“We were up at the front of the building at 1:30 p.m. and it looked like the line was still way back, like where we were when you spoke with us,” Lori Young told me by email Sunday morning.
“When we did get in, they were taking in 10 people at a time,” she said. Best she could tell, the IRS took in more than 500 people in Detroit that day, given her spot in line and what she saw.
“We’re so happy that we got in,” she added. “If we arrived five minutes later, we would have missed the cut off. We were absolutely exhausted after standing and waiting for so long.”
She recalled walking out of the McNamara building at 4:05 p.m. when nobody was waiting in line any more. Many apparently were sent home before then.
“I’m thinking,” Young continued, “they had a lot of upset people after waiting for seven-plus hours and not being able to be seen.”
Garcia, at the IRS, estimated that less than 1,000 people turned out for the Saturday event. At around 3 p.m., he said, the line was cut off, which left about 250 taxpayers who did not receive service.
More than 25 IRS employees worked the event Saturday, he said, not including the number of employees providing support, such as security.
Far more taxpayers received help Saturday than at a similar event a year ago, he said. On Saturday, Garcia said 500 taxpayers received service from the IRS. A year ago at a Saturday event in May, he said, 280 taxpayers received service.
“Our Saturday events are normally scheduled in February, March, April and May of each year,” he said. “We currently have no other dates scheduled.”
Homer Cheese, 75, and his wife Venisher Cheese, 68, had heard about long lines at the IRS office in Detroit at another Saturday event April 13, so they arrived at about 5:30 a.m. But the couple still had a hard time believing the extent of the crowd, which Cheese noted was mainly African American, on Saturday.
“This is my first time ever being out here,” Venisher Cheese said. “I saw it on the news, but I never thought we’d be a part of it.”
The Detroit couple said they never had an ID problem. They had the same tax preparer for years, but she passed away. And they worked with a new preparer to file a 2023 return. They weren’t sure why they needed to verify their identity now. The couple said they didn’t claim anything different this year.
They both work in the cafeteria for Southfield public schools.
Venisher Cheese had worked with the Detroit Board of Education for 37 years and retired. But she stopped working only for about a year. “My girlfriend said I was going to die if I don’t get up and go to work, do something,” Venisher said. That’s how she ended up working for Southfield schools.
Homer Cheese said he talked to an IRS agent on the phone, but he was told he had to come downtown to show his driver’s license. “He said they got a lot of dead folks filing.”
“People stole a lot of money off them, I guess,” said Homer Cheese, as he stood holding his cane.
“I got a bad leg, so I told the people” on the phone, he said. “They said, ‘Well, we still have to see you.’ “
He had been standing in line about three hours when I talked with him and he showed me how his leg was swelling because of bad circulation.
The couple has not received their refund yet. “All we got is letters from the IRS,” he said.
By 12:15 p.m. Saturday, the couple was driving home after meeting with IRS employee around 11:45 a.m.
After putting in roughly six hours on Saturday, their issue still wasn’t resolved. Homer Cheese said the IRS gave them an appointment for 8:30 a.m. Friday and they’ll need to bring more paperwork.
Even so, he’s hopeful they’re one step closer to seeing the situation resolved and getting their federal income tax refund.
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X (Twitter) @tompor.