SITUATION:

A corporate officer mails his personal check to the district office to pay a corporation income tax account. The check is not accompanied by a bill and cannot be identified. A delinquent account is issued. A notice is mailed to the corporation, which provokes an irate letter to the Service. We then reply:

TACTLESS:

Gentlemen:

You neglected to include the corporation tax notice with your check. As you will note from the reverse of your notice, you were supposed to return the notice with your payment. Since you failed to do so, we had no way of knowing the account to which the check should be credited.

TACTFUL:

Gentlemen:

When Mr. Doe's personal check was received in our X District Office, we did not find the corporation tax bill which was to have come with the payment, so we did not know how to apply it.

However, your letter of June 1 gave us just the information we needed to mark your account "Paid in full."

SITUATION:

Taxpayer received a delinquency notice and writes the revenue officer inquiring about the assessment.

TACTLESS:

Dear Madam:

It should be noted that the instructions state that FICA taxes withheld during the month must be deposited by the 15th of the following month. Since you failed to deposit the taxes withheld for July by the due date, August 15, and did not send them until August 27, we are penalizing you 5 percent of the amount of the underpayment.

Please see that this check reaches us by return mail.

TACTFUL:

Dear Mrs.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain your tax bill.

You have probably overlooked the requirement of law that the tax withheld during the first two months of a calendar quarter be deposited

within 15 days after the close of each month. Penalties are provided for late deposits. The rate is 5 percent of the amount of the underpayment.

The tax you withheld for August, which was to be deposited on September 15, was actually deposited September 27. So $14.64 was added to your bill.

If you will send us your check for this amount, your account will be placed in balance at once.

Very truly yours,

SITUATION:

A taxpayer complains about not receiving his refund and points out that once when he owed tax the revenue officer was quick to collect.

TACTLESS:

My dear Sir:

I have received your undated letter advising me of your irritation because you have not received your income tax refund. Since you failed to fill out a change of address card at the Post Office when you moved, it is unreasonable to expect that we would be in a position to deliver your check.

I am, however, referring your letter to the X District Office for appropriate action.

Very truly yours,

TACTFUL:

Dear Mr. Brown:

We were glad to receive your letter giving us your new address because your refund check, which was mailed to the address shown on your income tax return, was sent back marked "Unclaimed."

Your letter has been referred to our X District Office, and you will be glad to know that your check will be remailed within ten days.

Sincerely yours,

Positive vs. Negative letters

NEGATIVE:

Dear Mr. Doe:

We cannot comply with your request of February 10 that we station one

of our full-time employees at the V.A. Hospital to assist your employees with their income tax returns. In rejecting your request, we should like to point out that we never give such service, since, under our present policy, we are prohibited from doing so.

Very truly yours,

Can you imagine how Mr. Doe felt about the Service after reading this letter? After that, revenue officers probably found an unfriendly personnel section, which made it extremely difficult to get cooperation on Notice of Levy, interviews with VA employees, and other official business.

POSITIVE:

Dear Mr. Doe:

Your letter of February 10 shows that you are interested in seeing that your employees file correct income tax returns and we want to be as helpful as possible. Our limited personnel has been tied up with enforcement duties, but we have managed to set aside every Monday morning for the assistance of taxpayers.

We have another plan in mind which may give us a chance to be more helpful. An Internal Revenue Agent Instructor will conduct an eight-hour training course for designated representatives of large firms in this area at 8:00 a.m., February 24, at the local Auditorium. The training should qualify those representatives to assist employees in preparing income tax returns involving simple problems.

You are cordially invited to send a representative. If you believe this plan will benefit you, please let me know the name of your representative. Sincerely yours,

Remember

That no letter is so discourteous as to justify a discourteous answer from the Service.

That the correspondent who insists on writing letters of the I-gavehim-a-piece-of-my-mind type has no place in the Internal Revenue

Service.

That a discourteous letter is a permanent record of the writer and the Service; it is an everlasting monument to the writer's discourtesy.

Unit 4

Effective Paragraphs

Paragraphing has already been covered, to some extent, in "Organizing Your Writing" (in Unit 2). There, two main points were covered: identifying the main points, or topics, that will be developed into paragraphs, and determining the order, or sequence, of the paragraphs that make up the written communication.

Five more points will be covered in this unit:

1. Getting started-writing opening paragraphs that get your letter, memo, or report off to a good start

2. Developing the paragraph

3. Paragraph length

4. Paragraph linkage

5. The art of stopping-writing good closing paragraphs

Getting Started-The Opening Paragraph

Let's begin at a logical place the opening paragraph of a letter or memorandum. Many writers have a hard time getting started unless they can rely on a stock paragraph.

Most stock openings do little more than tell the reader that the Postal Service has done its usual job and that we did, in fact, receive his letter or memo-no surprise to him, since we're answering it. These paragraphs often go on to repeat a good portion of what the reader told us in his letter or memo.

These openings are seldom ungrammatical or otherwise incorrect. But they frequently lack directness and vigor. Worse, they don't do well what a good opening paragraph should do:

1. Identify the incoming correspondence unobstrusively;

2. Plunge right into the message; contribute something of value to it; and

3. Set the tone and establish the style of the reply.

Identify the incoming correspondence

We do, of course, need to pin down which letter or memorandum we are answering. But we can do this without making the identification the main topic of our opening paragraph. When we put a statement in the main clause of a sentence, we tell our readers, "This is the important idea." When we put the same thought into a secondary clause, we say, “This is a minor part of the main idea." Put references to the date of the incoming communication into subordinate constructions (which clauses, for instance).

Not: Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of August 29, regarding refund of an overpayment of your 19— income tax. But: Upon receiving your memo of August 29, we checked our records and found...

Or:

Within ten days or two weeks you should receive the income tax refund which you asked about in your letter of August 29.

Contribute something to the message

When men wore lace on their coat sleeves, the buttons near the cuffs were useful and necessary. It has been a long time since we have seen any lace on a man's coat sleeve-but the buttons are still there. Many of our opening paragraphs are, like these buttons, useless reminders of a former era. Too often the only purpose they serve is to tell the reader that his message has been received. The opening paragraph should be the first unit of a planned, well-built reply. Don't waste the strategic position of a beginning on a useless frill.

Use the opening paragraph to let the reader know what the writing is about. If you let him know the purpose of the letter, memorandum, or report before you give the details, the details will fall in proper place, the reader will be spared the necessity of rereading, and your message is more likely to be understood. Besides-courtesy requires this consideration of the reader's time.

The opening line is a good place to thank the reader, if that is called for; to let him know you are sending him materials bearing on his problem; to answer his question.