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IRS Tells WWII Vet He's Dead

AP
January 27, 2015

Siegfried Meinstein, a 94-year-old World War II vet, just wants to pay his taxes. The IRS won't let him though. They say he's dead, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Siegfried Meinstein discovered that he was dead in April. He seems to be handling the news well."It isn’t really a problem in my daily life," he said, sitting at a table in his Upper Arlington assisted-living facility. "Everybody accepts my money."

This probably requires a little more explanation, so here it is: The Internal Revenue Service thinks 94-year-old Meinstein bought the farm, bit the big one, took a permanent vacation.

Meinstein has taken the news of his death with a bit of humor.

And despite his family’s best efforts, the IRS hasn’t changed its mind.

"If they keep insisting, what is it you say?" Ron Meinstein asked his dad. "‘Eventually, they’ll be right?’"

The debate over Meinstein’s existence began when an accountant attempted to file the elder Meinstein’s taxes online in April. The return was denied. The Social Security Administration had listed the filer as dead, the IRS said.

Sure, Meinstein is a little worse for wear, nursing the hip he broke while emerging from a swimming pool. But the man sitting at the table, the German-born World War II vet with the carefully parted silver hair, hasn't conceded anything.

"He’s very much alive!" says a fellow resident in the senior community where Meinstein keeps an apartment full of pictures of his late wife.

Meinstein has still been unable to prove to the IRS he is, in fact, alive.

The Meinsteins still hope that’s their answer. The tax advocate has filed again. They’ll wait for the reply.

Meanwhile, they just got another letter from the IRS. It wanted to know why Siegfried Meinstein has a credit balance of $14,000 in taxes he prepaid for 2014.

And why the IRS can’t find his return.

For now, being both alive and unable to pay his taxes, Siegfried Meinstein is proving idioms wrong.

Published under: IRS , Veterans