In response to the $284 Billion electric bill, I have a story of my own.

About 8 years ago, I filed my taxes expecting a $108 refund from the state of California. A short while later I got a letter from the California State Franchise Tax Board that I had made a mistake on my taxes and they had corrected my return. I should receive my refund of $10,800 in the mail soon and no further action was required on my part.

Now I have an Degree in Accounting and worked as an Auditor for DoD and a Contract Price/Cost Analyst for almost 30 years. I always do my family's taxes and while I'm not perfect, my reaction was "WHAT!!!!!!" Now mind you, my husband and I made very good money between myself and my husband who was in law enforcement and worked a lot of overtime. And because of the overtime, his job would automatically withhold a large percent on the overtime payments something like 30-40%. I went over that return again and again looking for an error any error since we had a rental property and also itemized and we made a lot and our tax liability was always a lot but I always made sure that withholding took care of that. Since I used Turbo Tax I also wondered whether there could have been an error in the tax program that hadn't been corrected.

I looked and looked and couldn't find anything wrong with my return, but one thing I was sure of is that if the FTB sent me a check for $10,800 they were going to have to pry it from my cold, dead hands since I felt that I spent a lot of time searching for an error or a mistake in my return and not finding any, and my thought was either someone at the FTB was F'ing with me, or since I am such an honest person (and I truly am) I could always justify keeping it until they asked for it back for my inconvenience. My husband and I joked about it for a month because he kept saying that he knew I wouldn't keep it, though he said I better not send his half back, and we kept joking about what our defense would be if we did. My defense was always going to be that I sent in my return with the right info included and they sent me a letter telling me that my return contained an error. At that point I deferred to them as the experts. After a month my refund check arrived for $108. I still say to this day this was someone at the FTB's idea of a joke.