But what about people who overpay their taxes? It might seem hard to believe but the IRS had $1.3 billion sitting owed to 1.4 million people who did not file a tax return for tax year 2006. (You can read more about it at this IRS press release). This outstanding amount owed back to taxpayers happens because someone might pre-pay their tax based on quarterly estimates but then they fail to file a tax return at tax filing time.

The problem is, if you didn’t file your income tax within three years you generally forfeit your right to receive that refund. That means the money will not be leaving the U.S. Treasury, and Congress will be able spend it for its many “important” projects.

It doesn’t seem fair does it. The IRS gets a much longer time period to collect any money you owe them, but you get a much shorter time period to collect money from the the IRS that they owe you.

I guess Congress, who makes up these screwy rules thinks it’s fair, but that because it benefits them.
They fix the rules in their favor.

Related posts:

1. The Four Stresses You’ll Face During Tax Time
2. An Interesting Tax Problem Resulting From the Recession

Here’s the situation, as reported by the WCF Courier and summarized here for your convenience: Last year, people had jobs and income but not all of them had sufficient taxes taken out of their paychecks. This year, some of those people don’t have jobs. The problem? They earned taxable income but now have no income to pay their back taxes.

That’s a difficult situation to be in. On the one hand, I understand the desire that these taxpayers had initially to avoid the constant pay-reducing reminder of income tax by delaying their tax payments. On the other hand, it is a bit like gambling in the sense that they are accepting the risk that they will have an income to pay the tax debt at a later time.

What’s the solution? Unless we reduce or eliminate the excessive taxation of American taxpayers, I don’t see an easy solution. And I’m not about to say “well, they should have…” because should-haves don’t solve the problem right now.

Their best option is to file their income tax and pay what they can, even if they can’t pay it all. As the article correctly points out, the penalty for not filing is greater than the penalty for filing and not paying. So it always “pays” to file your tax return, even if you can’t pay.

The next thing they should do immediately after filing? Contact a licensed tax attorney. It is my belief that tax attorneys are the one group of tax professionals best trained to assist you. I believe they’re more aggressive in representing you than a CPA or accountant would be. Tax attorneys aren’t afraid to look at different options which might help you.

Tax attorneys aggressively go to bat for taxpayers who are staring at the open hand of the “tax man” and wondering how they will fill it. We use 100% legal tax resolution strategies, tried and perfected over the years, to help people in difficult tax situations.

No tax case is hopeless, and of course the options will vary from case to case.

Don’t hestitate to give us a call if you want to discuss your tax case.

(Read the full WCF Courier article here)

Related posts:

1. The Four Stresses You’ll Face During Tax Time

April 14 tax stress
In the weeks and months leading up to the April 15 tax deadline, you (and most other Americans) will be facing the stress of tax preparation. There’s the effort of gathering paperwork, pouring through difficult-to-understand tax forms, juggling paper and a calculator, and hoping desperately that you don’t have to pay taxes this year. The stress comes from finding the time to do taxes and then from trying to figure out each separate line in your tax return.

April 15 tax stress
No sooner is that stress over then the next stressor appears: April 15 is tax deadline day. Most Americans just barely squeak their tax returns in on time and the stress of trying to get it done and rushing through those last minute calculations feels rushed. Did you get everything? What if you didn’t do something correctly? You vow to do your taxes earlier next year (but who has the time?)

April 16 tax stress
Fortunately, not everyone feels this stress, but many people do. If you owe tax and you have to pay it, guess what: your bank account may be drained on this day to cover the check you wrote for your taxes. That’s stressful as you watch your tiny nest egg now devoured. Goodbye to that new sofabed you were hoping for.

April 17 tax stress
Have you ever played roulette and hoped desperately that the ball lands on your number? April 17 tax stress is the opposite: It’s audit stress. You hope desperate that you don’t get picked for the probing and invasive procedure known as the tax audit. And realistically, this stress doesn’t go away on April 18; it hangs over us like a cloud every single day.

If you’re facing these stresses, you’ll find some good advice for handling the April 14 and April 17 tax stress in this article at CNN Money called “A guide to avoid an IRS tax audit“. And if you want to avoid the April 16 stress, give our office a call.

Related posts:

1. Mark Your Calendars For Tax Payment Deadlines

I’ve got this one on my web site, which counts down to the
April 15 tax filing deadline.

But I wanted to provide you with a fuller list of dates.

I googled “2009 tax dates” and found this link showing tax filing deadlines on irs.gov, which seemed promising. Until I clicked it. Not very helpful at all to determine when one must file income tax returns.

This is typical of the IRS: There is the obvious, basic questions that people want to know. And those obvious, basic questions should have obvious, basic answers that are quick and easy to find. With just one or two clicks from the site.

But why should the IRS do anything the easy way? Why spend $1 of taxpayer’s money to create a simple set of tax rules accessible from an easy to find site when you can spend $100 of taxpayer’s money to do the same thing???

And so, when we look for “2009 dates” or “2009 deadlines” or “2009 tax dates” (etc.) we get a whole bunch of useless information.

Note to IRS: Post the filing dates on your home page… or at least a link to open a tax calendar. It’s not difficult to do. (Heck, a high school student with a list of dates could probably do it in an evening with Google Calendar).

Now, I realize that April 15 is THE DAY. It’s the day that is burned on most people’s psyche as the darkest day of the year. But there are other important filing dates and tax deadlines throughout the year that need to be adhered to.

If you want to mark your calendars with relevant tax-related dates, this calendar from MSNMoney is a lot better.

Here’s another tip that the IRS will ignore: They should allow syncing options with Blackberries and personal online calendars so that we can click a button on the IRS site and download the filing dates to our calendars… perhaps even with helpful reminders built in to remind us in the weeks leading up to a tax deadline. The technology is there, the federal government needs to implement it.

No related posts.