Sophie Kosofsky
Revenge of the Comma
Kosofsky was a case about a $70,000 tax bill that resulted from a punctuation mistake. (yep, really) It has the distnction of being the first matter I handled with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.
Ms. Kosofsky worked in the film industry building movie sets, and she received a 1099 for $750. However, the director, an Italian, wrote this amount as $750,00. (in Italy, commas are used to separate numerals and decimals instead of periods) The IRS recorded this as seventy five thousand in income and proceeded to make an assessment and a wage levy. (which due to a change of address changes, Ms. Kosofsky didn't learn about until it happened)
A significant part of being a tax attorney is essentially "asking nicely" and persuading the IRS to make a change without having to resort to legal action; indeed, this is how most matters are resolved. I was able to do this in the Kosofsky case, by persuading the collections unit to grant us a collection hold while an amendment could be processed. Ultimately, the wrongly garnished funds were returned. (yay...)
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