Taxes!

That said, would the assmonkeys I freelanced for PLEASE get their W2s in my mailbox now? Y'know, so I don't have to push the deadline envelope?

W2s? How interesting, I usually get 1099-MISC.

Taxes suck, but I like to think that my check is earmarked for non-killing government stuff like NASA telescopes or NEA grants or the OSHA for Kids web site.

I'm told that the loan for the house I'm buying is structured in such a way that I can deduct the entirety of my mortgage payments. Something smells very Fat Tony about it, but if true I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm trying to get it done by Tuesday so I can just go to my accountant's and be like, "here's the stuff, it's done, go to it." Then I get to watch my hard-earned checking account drain away. Sigh. It'll be worth it to have it behind me, though.

Nothing was taken from that relatively small amount of profit, but I assume it will absolutely drain any chance I have at a refund. (The last few years have been just under $1K.)

I can't see how I can possibly owe you two grand. I'm sure there are people who make twice as much as me who don't owe fuck.

Ime the most common things the IRS catches and sends correction letters on are:
1. Unreported self employment income
2. Investment income that is in your name but a relative deals with the account and you don’t have the paperwork sent to you so you often forget it exists (see also: aging parents)
3. Unemployment income for short periods of time
4. Cashing out a retirement plan or life insurance policy from a former job especially if there was hardly any money in it to begin with
5. A w2 from a job you quit in January that you forgot about and they sent it to an old address

6. Investment income from a stock plan from a company you no longer work for because brokerage firms will often not report the basis of employer stock so when you sell it it shows the cost basis as 0 and it looks like you made a huge profit

The IRS fairly primitive computer system

every year I get a letter from them about 1099s and it's like "Sorry, but the name doesn't match the SSN#" and invariably the name DOES match the actual SSN# but their 1953 scanners read the name and/or SS number wrong

We had an issue where the IRS kept saying we owed money that had already been paid long before. We had the receipts and everything, yet every two to three months we went through the cycle of getting a letter in the mail stating we still owed the money > logging in to see that indeed the payment had been made but was listed as "processing" > waiting on hold for two hours for a rep to confirm we had been paid and no need to worry, the system was just lagging behind due to the pandemic backlog > getting another letter stating we owed the money > rinse and repeat for about 16 months before it was finally resolved.

Ugh … sorry.., I mean I don’t work for the IRS so it’s not my fault but

_The IRS fairly primitive computer system_

every year I get a letter from them about 1099s and it's like "Sorry, but the name doesn't match the SSN#" and invariably the name DOES match the actual SSN# but their 1953 scanners read the name and/or SS number wrong

hey guys did you know I'm so baller that in addition to working my full-time job, I made $14,000 in non-employee compensation from DoorDash in 2022?

Me neither! but the IRS seems to think I did!

(i'm not actually even stressed, I'm giggling .....clearly someone fucked up)

i may have questions for this thread as I report this obvious mistake.

Did someone steal your SSN# or something?

i think if someone outright stole it, I'd have noticed before now. but I am checking my credit report just in case.

feel like it's more a case of someone who was keying in an SSN made a one digit error, but who knows.

apparently this is a thing that has happened to other people though:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IRS/comments/18rk1gu/someone_used_my_wifes_social_for_doordash/

Yeah, it's not like DoorDash requires you to show the actual SS Card - you can probably tell them any old number

years ago I worked at design firm and we briefly had a contractor from eastern europe.. I kept asking her to complete the W-2 (she claimed her SSN# was 'private') and when she finally handed it back to me, her SSN# was XXX-XX-1234 .. literally 1234 were the last four digits. Huh, what are the chances of that?

CONFIRMED - IDENTITY STOLEN.

looked at the transcripts and you can see the address that Doordash had for me is one I've never had in history. this should be a fairly easy process to dispute as I can prove on my own credit report I've never lived there. have set up credit freeze and fraud alert on my account. have all of the forms ready to go.

shit, that sucks! Nothing with the IRS is ever quick & easy, tho

they haven't met a guy with infinite patience to be annoying like me before

You will end up getting an IP PIN that they will send you each year until you die

bleh.

looks like the guy got deactivated eons ago but may have actually been using my DoorDash account. cunning.

FTC report and IRS ID theft report filed electronically, just gotta respond to the CP2000 now.

jeeeeezus

Doordash replied with what seems like a form letter to indicate yes it was fraud and they deactivated the account. apparently this happens so much at their great, well-run company that they already have a template for it.

welp that'll make my claim with IRS easier.

Tempted to post in the No Way NYT thread about the morning newsletter that gets a basic analysis of the 2017 TCJA wrong in terms of homeownership deductions… but people would probably be annoyed/disappointed by the banality of my no way

Still no refund. Anticipating full fucking audit and utter financial ruin.

I seriously doubt that, T … re audit

Though I totally understand the anxiety… I remember when I got cited for having “borrowed” registration tags on my car and I had convinced myself that I was going to be sentenced to jail or picking up garbage on the freeway in a yellow vest … I ended up with a $250 fine and that’s it

My tax preparer is a Republican (they're hard to avoid around here), and we've tacitly agreed to avoid politics when I meet with him every year. I asked him if there were any tax credits for our new heat pump, and got in a dig at red states that dragged their feet about implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, hoping for a Trump win so they wouldn't have to do anything at all. He sent me an info sheet with a list of tax credits, seemingly not specifically tied to the IRA, and said I'd qualify for the $600 for a new AC. I said "what about the $2K further down the page that specifically refers to heat pumps?" He said "oh gosh you're right!" I think I need a new tax person.

I don’t use ILX to solicit clients but if you want to DM me about it…

Huzzah. (Everything is ready, I just need one more form, and it sure would be nice to get that one more form, he said generally to the universe.)

Man there’s stuff I don’t get until well into February

Thought the bump would be with the deadline looming here in the UK.

Balls

The Doge kids approved my refund, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Gotta pay the man this year. (Last year was weird income-wise and I misunderestimated my estimated payments.) Wonder what happens if I don't ...

jk jk but for real who will even notice?

I've wondered that myself. I decided last year to stop claiming a business loss on my old freelance work in 2025, but I think I could go along for a few more years with doge's blessing.

i’ve had a refund in the mail to me for about a month now.

not looking forward to this

Having to tell people they owe money to corrupt fascists is unpleasant.

Olson discussed the impact of the cuts during a March 24 appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, where she said that between layoffs and buyouts, up to 50% of the IRS’s staff could eventually be cut. She explained that taxpayers must work with the IRS well beyond tax season and that the staffing cuts will make it difficult to get through to anyone on the phone to resolve their problems or have their correspondence processed in a timely manner. With the IRS’s move toward automation, more taxpayers will receive automatic notices but won’t be able to contact a person working for the agency to resolve them, she said.

Wonder what happens if I don't ...

jk jk but for real who will even notice?

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, April 2, 2025 2:45 PM (yesterday)

i had a tax mishap w/ an old account over covid where my payment wasn't sent and honestly nothing really happens you just get a letter one day saying you owe money from an old return

There’s stuff that’s automated like if what they have on file indicates that you owe but you haven’t paid… so they will notice, because it’s easy to automate… there are other things that automation doesn’t catch and can go unnoticed/unenforced …

Basically you get a letter saying you owe … then, if you don’t pay, you get another letter… they add penalties and interest… if you still don’t pay (or amend the return), you will get a letter saying they are imposing a lien. If you are due a refund in a future year, they will likely take it to pay the balance due. They can also garnish wages, and levy bank accounts…

Your refund was mailed on March 07, 2025. For information about how to file a claim because you have not received your refund check, please read the information below.

If you did not receive a check, or it was lost, stolen, or destroyed, you may file a claim if you know your current address.

fml

Oh no

No direct deposit for you?

I don’t have a US bank account. tbf the letter is being mailed internationally but even so..

We had some useless accountants do our taxes a couple years ago and for whatever reason they had our refund mailed to us instead of direct depositing it. Some dummy intercepted the letter from IRS, endorsed the check IN HIS OWN NAME, and we had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get the IRS to send us a replacement. It was a huge refund too!

Did they have your bank info? Did you specifically request direct deposit? … Not to get into the minutiae of tax software defaults and legal requirements for the practice … but, in general, clients tend to assume accountants have psychic powers and access to special databases that they absolutely do not.

They had it direct deposited to us the year before! And they didn’t even ask our preference the year this happened. We fired them and I just do my own taxes now.

But you just assumed that it would be the same? … Dude … no. Maybe they sucked in other ways, but confirming check vs direct deposit is your responsibility as the client.

OK

Like imagine if you changed banks at some point in the past year and they just had the refund direct deposited to the same account? … You would probably have ended up getting a check tbh.