Determination pays off in local man's battle with IRS

Anyone who knows him can tell you that Pete Skibsrud is determined.

Now, so can the Internal Revenue Service after giving up its five-year battle with Skibsrud over an amount just over $18,000 in penalties and interest they collected from him over a 2009 withdrawal he made from his retirement account to help his son pay off a troublesome mortgage.

Skibsrud, of Kalispell, doesn’t dispute that he got bad advice about his initial tax liability and made a mistake by not paying the taxes on time. But he has been trying to settle the matter with the IRS since 2010, paying all of the money requested and then pursuing a series of appeals to try to get back various penalties that seemed to him to be unfairly levied.

Finally, last week, he received a check from the U.S. Treasury for $18,040.40 and proudly paraded it into the Inter Lake office to, as he said, give hope to the little guy that you can beat the bureaucracy.

“I’m glad the nightmare is over,” he added.

It’s hard to know who was more scared, though — David or Goliath — as Skibsrud called and wrote to at least three different offices of the IRS in his pursuit for an explanation of why he was being penalized, always amazed that no one could explain to him exactly why his money had been taken.

“I could never talk to the same person twice, Skibsrud said. “They’d write me letters, and I’d respond to that person, and then they would disappear. Finally a gal in Missoula named Aspen Cruise tried to help me navigate through it, and then I at least had a person I could talk to when I needed help.”

Though he got his check, Skibsrud noted that he never did get a good explanation for why he had been charged so much in penalties that apparently turned out to be incorrect.

The refund check arrived without any letter, but his friends gave him good advice: Cash the check and savor the victory. That’s just what he’s doing.