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I have filed my 2012 tax return jointly with my wife, along with my wife's ITIN application, back in late March.

In April, I got a letter for IRS ITIN department saying that we should send my wife's original passport to them. So we sent my wife's passport on May 15th. USPS tracking number confirmed that IRS received it on May 20th.

However, last week (end of June) we have received another letter from IRS ITIN department saying that our ITIN application has been rejected, rejected because we have not sent the original identification document that they requested!

Okay, let's put our tax return and ITIN aside. Where is my wife's passport? Right now my wife does not have her personal identification, nor proof of legal status in U.S. Could IRS have lost it?

I tried to call the IRS several times. One time I waited for 1 hour and 20 minutes to talk to a person, and that person said he has only 10 minutes to talk before he has to leave. He said they'll investigate and someone(?) will call us back soon, but never called back. I wrote them a letter, but no response. I tried calling several times more, but machine is saying 'sorry too many calls right now, we can't accept your call'.

What can I do?

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    Please note: I am not the person who experienced the problem above. My name is currently appearing there because I was the last to edit this question (the title). The original poster's user name is to the right of mine.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Jul 19, 2013 at 16:53

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There are a some options at your disposal.

  1. Taxpayers Advocate with the IRS. This is the IRS internal office that helps taxpayers dealing with the Service, when the Service is "misbehaving". Your situation clearly falls under their jurisdiction, so you can give them a call. They may be quite effective, and can definitely "grill" offices or officers who are not doing their job properly.

  2. Your country's consulate. The IRS (The US government) demanded your official passport and then lost it. You will definitely need to speak to the consulate about issuing a new one, but if your consulate is "powerful" enough with the State Department - they can certainly make enough noise for the passport to be "miraculously" found in some cubicle in the IRS ITIN office. They will also give you instructions about what to do with regards to issuing a replacement document.

  3. You might file a police report with the USPS inspector, who will also not want to be blamed for the loss and will make efforts to locate the package (I hope it was sent as certified, as anything sent to the IRS should be).

  4. Try talking to your local congressman (you can locate the representative and the senators for your area through this site). I'm not sure how willing they are going to be to help you since you're not a citizen and not a voter, but its worth trying.

  5. As a last resort you can talk to a tax attorney who is experienced in suing IRS, but such an approach may backfire.

In case your passport is not found and you need to get a replacement, you can contact the USCIS to get a replacement I-94.

If you still need to submit the (now new) passport to the IRS - this time don't submit the original. They also accept copies certified by the issuing agency (your country's consulate) or copies certified at the IRS offices.

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