This is what your Councilmember is for. Call their office.

You can try your council members. Many are worthless when it comes to things like this. You may want to start with an at-large that running for reelection. No guarantee but they might be paying a little more attention these days.

I’ve also had the misfortune of having to deal with OTR. No response from Lewis George’s office. Decided to go to OTR in person and was fully expecting to have a truly awful experience. I was in and out in like half an hour and the person that resolved my issue couldn’t have been nicer. Just go in.

All of the OTR staff directory is public information. You can get the names of supervisors and OTR leaders and email them with firstname.lastname@dc.gov. I got my ridiculous OTR issue resolved doing exactly this… other OTR employees threatened me and made horrendous mistakes on my case and when I provided documentation of these issues (including dates and math) to the OTR leaders in an email (CCed a few random people from the mayors office), my issue was resolved almost instantly and I got my tax penalty reduced entirely because the original OTR people on my case couldn’t for their life provide me one number and when the number changed they couldn’t give me a good explanation… leadership saw this in my documentation and just said screw it we’ll waive the penalty because OTR got too sloppy with me and I called them on it.

Specifically it seems OTR has different offices working on different issues and that creates real problems for them IMO… for example one of their offices cashed my check but a different office sent me a notice saying I never responded and was to be penalized. So I again provided a shit ton of documentation, CCed a bunch of the OTR and mayors office people, told them their math was wrong with proof, and told them they should start communicating internally so they aren’t cashing checks while also sending out non-response notices two months AFTER cashing my check.

Don’t get me started on how their late penalty never seems to stop accruing which makes it impossible to know what you owe by the time the mail actually arrives and is processed by them. I’m pretty sure they only take mailed checks (at least when I dealt with them) which makes this so difficult because you can’t time the mail and OTR processing time. Here is where I got my names for OTR: http://m.taxadmin.org/temp_directory_old/2013app/state_dir_phone.php?st=DC

I agree: get your councilmember involved.

I had an issue and was getting threatening letters but had no way to contact anyone to clear it up. No one answers the phone and i had no other way to contact them. My councilmember's constituent services staff had the relevant OTR supervisor call me the next day after i submitted my issue to them, and everything was cleared up on day two.

My councilmember had a constituent issue form on their webpage and I used that rather than call.

I've actually had good dealings with OTR, specifically on an unincorporated franchise tax issue. It was during COVID so it had to be by phone. It required several calls, during one of which the agent promised to call me back (thought bubble: yeah right). Amazingly two hours later he did.

That said, I think in person is the way to go, and bring TONS of patience and good vibes. And check out the advocate, it has worked for people I know. Good luck!

I went in person and my issue was resolved in a day. Making sure you have all the documentation necessary (and more sometimes) to hold their hand through your whole case really helps so that they don't have the opportunity to bring out the denial stamp.

I went in person to clear an issue that I thought would take time researching. The person who helped me after a few minutes discovered that they had made an error transcribing the paper copy filed .