Filing Taxes was Complicated Enough, now I can’t even start without access to my Tax Forms

A glimpse into one small part of what is contributing to the collapse of the American Empire.

I long for simpler days. The picture above shows a standard IRS 1040-A tax form filled out in pencil by a Missouri resident in 1937.

He even scribbled out an entry on the form. That’s a level of freedom that is foreign to me. Things have changed a bit since then.

I remember three short years ago, and all of the previous 15 years prior to that. When tax season arrived, employers would simply email your tax forms to you. No mess, no fuss.

They would also send a copy via regular mail, just in case, as a backup. Before email, receiving your tax information was even simpler, we received them in our regular mail.

Fast forward to 2022 and some bureaucrats in order to justify their worthless existence, have taken this efficient system that worked so well for over 15 years and added their insane touch to it.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Where normal, sensible people would have stuck by the phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” controlling, bureaucratic morons, the type that make it their purpose in life to ensure that working in corporate America is increasingly frustrating year over year, “instigated a process” complicating the system.

I assume their simple minds were awed by a presentation given by Automatic Data Processing, LLC, a company that calls itself a “provider of human resources management software and services.” Thus, for the low, low cost of $59/month plus $4/per employee, an unnecessary middleman was added.

For my employer, the cost of subcontracting out to ADP to do HR’s job for them, ADP advertises a cost of $59, the base monthly fee they supposedly charge to all of their 800,000 customers, plus approximately $120,000 for our 30,000 employees. $120,059 per month.

At least, those are the numbers provided to me by one website. Another puts their fees at $39/per month plus $5/per employee. I suppose it fluctuates and I’m sure they would negotiate with a company that has 30,000 employees. However, as the author of the following article discovered, ADP is not that transparent with its pricing:

As the above article also points out, the ADP system is not the most modern or user-friendly.

ADP's inflexible system coupled with a reclusive and irresponsive HR department has made getting my tax forms a monumental task.

This “cost/time savings” has freed up the HR employees to do what they do best, apply their incompetence to screwing up the non-payroll functions of their jobs. While ADP, a company that has been around for 70 years performing payroll processing for its clients, is probably a better choice than letting the brainless staff in Human Resources handle payroll, using their service adds some extra steps, complicating what was a simple process just a few short years ago.

ADP is also, as the article above pointed out, a legacy company. For 70 years, it was the only option available besides in-house payroll processing. As is the same with most legacy companies that have a monopoly in a business segment, they don’t need to offer flexibility to make a profit.

My biggest complaint about ADP is that they “do not offer customer service help for their client’s employees.” If you run into any issues with ADP, don’t call them. They won’t help. Instead, we employees are directed to “contact your employer for assistance.”

ADP has no idea how incompetent HR departments can be.

Yes, the would-be the same department that found payroll processing “too hard” and outsourced this part of their job to ADP in the first place. I don’t know about your HR department, but thus far, the one at the company I work for has proven to be extremely frustrating, unreliable, and more often than not, unavailable.

At my employer, we can’t simply call up HR with an issue. They have effectively put up an alligator filled moat and drawbridge between them and the employees. Out of 6 phone calls I have made to HR, 6 of them went to voicemail. Dutifully, I have left a voice message each time. None of those calls have ever been returned.

They prefer (demand?) we use a system called “MyHR” to submit a work ticket. MyHR believes it is psychic. Instead of allowing employees to enter their own subject lines, in its infinite wisdom, MyHR offers a dropdown menu, from which employees can select from a list of 15 potential issues. If you have a real issue, odds are it will not be offered as an option from the dropdown menu.

From there, this know-it-all system coughs up a series of further drop-down menus as it tries to guess why you are writing. It prohibits giving us pesky bothersome employees the ability to freely type in why we are contacting HR

If you are lucky enough to be able to provide enough information using dropdown menus within the limited scope allowed, you will be given the opportunity to submit your HR ticket. No matter what information you provide, such as “the ADP website refuses to recognize my sign in as my former employer also uses the ADP system, and it will only allow me access to one employer,” the HR lackey will write you back 24 hours later attaching a copy of “How to use the ADP system.”

They assume that this solves your problem, absolves them of all responsibility, and saves them from reading about your actual issue.

Then they close your HR ticket, confident that they have been helpful patting themselves on the back for a job well done. But more importantly, this means that the HR lackey gets another “gold star” in their employee file for closing an HR issue in under 24 hours. Congratulations! You just helped to improve the employee performance metric for an HR employee by submitting your issue.

If you insist on still having an issue since the “How to use the ADP system” document doesn’t offer any help with your specific problem, you can a- become a problem employee by submitting another MyHR ticket, or b- give up and just don’t file your taxes this year.

This is what it’s come to, America.

Can you not see the imminent collapse of “the system” yet as it falls under the weight of its own ineptitude? Payroll processing is hardly the only issue like this.

The nature of the beast being the way it is, it has probably made the simple traditional process of mailing or emailing your tax forms to you an impossibility. If not, the personality type of those who work in HR is one hell-bent on not offering any real assistance. They are usually stubborn, short-sighted, and insistent that you will use the system provided, or suffer the consequences.

You don’t want to ruffle the feathers of HR people. ADP couldn’t give a crap about you; you aren’t their client. The only solution I can see at this point is to throw your hands up in the air, say to yourself, “I tried my best,” and break the law, skipping out on filing your taxes this year, and perhaps every year from now on going forward.

“The system” has screwed you, you rebellious prick, because you are abnormal.

You fall outside the range of possibilities “the system” has so kindly given you. The odds of working for two companies that both use the ADP system is pretty small, so your situation is not considered when combining the system used by your employer and the #5 ranked ADP payroll processing software.

Face the music, you deserve the thousands of dollars in penalties the IRS will eventually drop on you. You may even deserve some jail time for your anti-American attitude. Suck it up and accept your fate, after all, filing your taxes on time is your responsibility.