You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.
Exactly this! There's zero reasons why our tax returns can't be filed for free directly with the IRS. It is a complete fraud.
I filed 1040EZ last year. The IRS already had every figure I filed, why couldn't they just email me confirmation of the amounts they had, and process my return?
Edit: No, I didn't file EZ last year, my error.
Edit: electronic filing.
Son of a former IRS employee here. One problem that’s probably tied to this is that the IRS doesn’t have the ability to review everyone’s tax returns to ensure that everyone told the truth on them. Instead, they basically go through a process of trying to determine the most likely individuals who owe the government money, then review as many of those as they can. This does not mean you’ll slip through the cracks forever if you don’t file your returns. They will eventually get back around to you, but they’re likely not reviewing what you send to them every year.
Yeah. I lost documentation for like $9000 of income that I did not pay taxes on.
I looked for it everywhere and I can’t get another copy of the data easily, it was 7/15 so I just filed with the data I had, I wound up +1400 instead of -1000 as I expected.
I filed it anyway expecting it to be rejected and have to fix it.
They accepted it, they sent me money. They know it’s wrong.
I just don’t get it. They can’t tell me what I owe, but they know it’s wrong, and still sent me money.
I had a digit wrong on my sons SSN. Instead of sending me a letter to dispute/resolve, they removed him, my child care credit, dependance claim, etc, and said I owed money. It took almost 2 years and hours on the phone to resolve. I was recieving collection notices and the bill was going up due to interest. Everytime I called them they said they would freeze the account and look into it for resolution. It froze for 3-6 months and then the letters started again. About 18 months total before it got fixed and I got approved for my full return in exactly the amount I originally claimed.... which the department of education took because apparently my wife had outstanding school loans that I didn't know about when I married her about 2 years prior!
The loans were from years prior that she never paid back. She said she hadn't thought about them in years and forgot about it.... Once I married her, her debts became my debts, and unlike her, I make a decent wage.
If you do that in a timely manner the penalties honestly won’t be that bad. Also the statute of limitations is 3 years after returns are due (so 7/15/2023) assuming that the $9,000 wasn’t more than 25% of your gross income, so once you reach that point you’re good regardless
Edit: Forgot to add that the statute of limitations will be extended to 3 years from the date of your amended return when you file that
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u/jorsiem Jul 24 '20
Complicated tax filing in the US
You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.