Lewis County wins appeal against the IRS

Lewis County Mayor Jonah Keltner recently announced to Commissioners that the county earned a big victory against the IRS in its battle to have wrongfully charged penalties and interest refunded to the county.

According to Mayor Keltner, Lewis County Government received five different refund checks in the mail just last week from the IRS that totaled $74,872.81.

Those checks consisted of the final amounts of contested penalties and interest the county had been forced to pay the IRS back in 2020, when the Federal Government placed a lien on the county courthouse and demanded immediate payment of those funds.

This financial dispute between the county and the IRS dates back to 2016, when a former county employee negligently failed to properly pay the county's full amount of federal payroll taxes to the IRS over a span of two years.

Once that error was discovered by state auditors, the county quickly self-reported the issue to the IRS, and negotiations were made to correct the problem and pay the missing taxes.

However, despite verbal agreements between IRS agents and Mayor Keltner to have the majority of the county's penalties and interest waived, the federal government continued to charge those fees, which compounded over time.

Thankfully there was enough of a paper trail documented by the county and even by the IRS itself to prove the county's case, and after a battle of nearly two years, last month the U.S. Department of Treasury's "Independent Office of Appeals" finally ruled in the county's favor.

A grand total of $114,031 has now been refunded to the county by the IRS since the appeals process began. And even after deducting approximately $19,000 in tax attorney fees, the County is still projected to come out over $95,000 on top had it never contested those fees.

"First and foremost, I'd like to thank our Tax Attorney, Gary Dettloff, for earning this huge victory for Lewis County over the IRS", stated Mayor Keltner.

"Next I'd like to thank our County Commissioners, who agreed to stand up to the IRS and hire Mr. Dettloff to plead our case, so he could fight for all those tax dollars the county was rightfully owed."

"Finally, I'd also like to thank Johnny Clayton and Mike King for all of their assistance and support in this matter, they too were very instrumental in helping the county pursue and prove our case against the IRS."