How to resolve goods and services payment transaction sent to me in error. Please help!

[Dave800]

$1800 sent to me through goods and services in error.

Reversed transaction  (Or so I thought) and sent a refund

Refund came from my checking account  and over drafted my checking account.

Now I see some IRS information about needing a tax ID (I do not have a business or a Tax ID)

Or we will keep 24% and send to the IRS

Can someone point me in the right direction to help?

Do not know how to get this resolved

Person got their money back and I'm stuck with a mess

[sharpiemarker · Accepted solution]

@Dave800 

The milk is already spilt. The fact that you were sent this goods and services payment puts the burden on you to report & write it off on your taxes. Give your tax ID to lift the hold. Not everything on the 1099-K reportable income so don’t worry. Consult a tax advisor or do a web search on the subject for which there are plenty of results. There is a way to report you received this amount and refunded it. It zeroes out on your return.

Next time, the proper way to deal with situations like this is to contact customer services asap and let them know the payment is unsolicited, suspicious payment you do not know who it is from and to reverse it. Also let the sender know you’ve contacted customer service to reverse the transaction so they don’t anxiously open a dispute. (Not sure if this will still leave a trace of the goods and service payment on your account for taxes though. If it does, write it off as discussed above.)

Hopefully, the sender doesn’t file a dispute to try to squeeze another $1800 from you on the original transaction in case you sent a friends and family payment as a refund instead of refunding from within the original transaction.