A couple of weeks ago, I received a letter from the Rhode Island Division of Taxation. They were basically telling me they hadn't received payment for the income taxes that were due on April 15. What was really interesting was that I had paid them online. According to my credit card statement from May, the payment had been made.

The letter telling me this came at an awkward time. I was due to be at the RI Library Conference the next couple of days. To make things more interesting, the Division of Taxation's hours ran only from 8:30 am - 4:00 pm. It was going to make resolving this quickly a bit of a problem. I ended up leaving a little early so I could arrive and check-in at the conference so I could call right at 8:30 am.

After being stuck on hold for 20 minutes to speak with someone, my call was taken by a very nice and helpful woman in the division. After talking with her, she said that I just needed to fax her a copy of my credit card statement, the letter I had received, and a copy of the confirmation email I had received from the payment services used by the state. After the conference sessions that day, I stopped at the local library and faxed that information in.

I had sort of expected that to be the end of things. I figured she would drop me a call to let me know that everything has been taken care of. Unfortunately, the call never called.

Since I was worried about the possibility of fines, I broke down and made another call to the Division of Taxation. Things must be pretty hectic down there because it took quite a few calls to even reach the point where there was a slot for me to end up on hold in the queue. Fortunately, once I was placed on hold, it did not take long to reach someone. It ended up being the woman I had spoken to earlier. She just had to pop in my social security number, and she was able to confirm she had received the paperwork and that everything had been sorted out without any difficulty. While I thought it would have been nice for her to drop me a quick call to confirm this, I was thankful it was sorted out with ease. I expressed my thanks and that was that. At least it was good news!