Please help me get square with the gubmint

April 8, 2010 12:29 PM

I need to file my taxes. The catch? I haven't filed for a few years.

Can I go ahead and file my taxes for this year and wait to catch up? Or does filing set off some kind of "wait a minute, where's the stuff for 2005-2008?" alarm and I really ought to file everything now? Simple, straightforward taxes - as far as I know, I don't owe any money. I don't have my W-2s for previous years, though, and don't know how I would go about getting all the info in time to file everything at once before the deadline.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (14 answers total)

Contact a CPA and make an appointment. The up side--you can deduct their fee for tax preparation when you file next year. Waiting only makes it worse. You don't specify which state you are in and that can make a difference, (if you live in a state with state income taxes).

FWIW, you are not alone. Better to come clean and deal with this than let it wait.
posted by 6:1 at 12:42 PM on April 8, 2010

File for any year for which you have info. Call old employers to get W-2s. File for missing years. The IRS will notice years in which you didn't file. They will wonder if you owe taxes. I've been in this boat; it's not fun, but you will be better off filing. I think you can file 3 years late and still get a refund, but I'm not sure, so you should check.
posted by theora55 at 12:45 PM on April 8, 2010

Here's a good article about not filing a return for years.

The simplest way to resolve it (though not necessarily the best, I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice etc.) would be to contact the IRS and tell them that you haven't filed for the past few years. They may have filed your returns for you already (which since they don't know your details might not be what you really owe) and you can ask them to send you copies of your previous W2s. Once you know how much you owe (which would include penalties and interest) they can work with you to come up with some sort of payment plan.

As 6:1 says, hiring an accountant to sort this mess out for you might be a better idea than trying to handle it yourself.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:45 PM on April 8, 2010

I did this about 15 years ago. I hadn't filed in a few years, so I called the IRS. They suspended any non-filing fines that they could have levied, sent me every 1099 that was filed in my name and gave me 6 months or so to get my taxes in order. When the taxes were all filed, we set up a payment plan that included interest on the balance due and they took every refund that I would have gotten until the unpaid taxes were paid off. All things considered, the IRS was decent enough to me and it wasn't a terrible experience. I remember one of the IRS folks telling me that they are easier on those that report themselves, and it's the ones that they have to go and find that get the nasty treatment such as seizures of accounts and property. I'd start by calling them.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 1:18 PM on April 8, 2010 [2 favorites]

I had a friend who didn't file for years, worked for cash. The IRS caught up with him and he told them he'd been severely alcoholic, couldn't remember a thing. He didn't have any assets, didn't own a car, they just dropped it.
posted by mareli at 1:19 PM on April 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Just like kuujjuarapik, I found myself in that situation once. I did the same thing - called the IRS number and basically said, "Ok, here's the deal - I'm a bad person. What now?" They told me to just go to any tax person (CPA or even something like H&R Block, which is what I did) and come clean. Ended up with no penalties or anything. I even got the refunds I would have gotten had I filed those missing years on time.
posted by ctmf at 2:05 PM on April 8, 2010

I was behind on filling taxes once. It totally haunted me until I cleared it up, which was a surprisingly straightforward process in which I just did what I should have done in the first place. So just do it, seriously. Many of your employers could probably fax you your W-2s this afternoon. And if you file this year's now, that makes your burden of guilt and your to-do list that much lighter.

But a data point that might help here is that I did not file all at once, and filing some but not all of them did not cause the IRS to suddenly notice the missing returns. I owed them 2005, 2006, and 2007, and it was about time to file for 2008. I filed 2008, then (two months later), 2005, then (three months later), 2006 and 2007. No communication from them, no garnishment of the returns I was getting or anything. But even if they did notice, what happens is that they send you a letter saying "hey, you need to get around to filing your taxes. File soon or you'll be in trouble." But "soon" is like 30 or 60 days, so it sounds like it'd be feasible for you to meet that deadline even if you did inadvertently come to their attention.
posted by salvia at 2:10 PM on April 8, 2010

Lots of good advice in this thread. I am not an accountant but would like to echo those that say you should call the IRS to explain your situation. Generally speaking, as long as you indicate to them that you're taking care of it and give them a timeline of when you'll have them submitted, they should be pretty easy to deal with.

I would also go ahead and file the 2009 taxes now. For the back taxes, hiring a CPA might cost you $200-300 but it will greatly increase your peace of mind.

Seriously, do not put this off any longer. Any penalties and fees will continue to rack up until you take care of this and you'll feel like a huge weight is lifted once it's done.
posted by dhammond at 2:15 PM on April 8, 2010

Call, call, call. My experiences with the IRS have been almost totally excellent. ALL THEY WANT is to hear from you. Try not to make promises you can't deliver to them--but if you mess up on the plans you make with them, call again. They are the most eager people in the world to hear from you—and calling always pays off in your benefit. So I'd file and I'd call to say you're filing and you know you're in arrears and would like to make plans. Be honest and do not promise anything you know you can't deliver. You absolutely do not need a CPA to do any of this but if you can afford it, it's a help.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:08 PM on April 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

We recently got right with the IRS after not filing for several years (we'd both had taxes withheld from our paychecks, so we'd paid, we just hadn't filed). Filing some of the missing years didn't seem to trigger anything at the IRS's end to make them realize there were more years outstanding. (If it had, their reaction would probably have been "well, hell, we're going to have to refund even more of their money?")

We had a professional tax preparer do them, for about $200 per year's return. It might well be possible to do it on one's own, but we felt it was worth the cost to have his expertise.

You will probably get better results if you get in contact with the IRS, make arrangements to file and pay, and (very important) abide by those arrangements. (They don't like it if they think somebody was telling them falsehoods just to get them to back off for a while.) At one point they slapped a lien on my paycheck, but when I pulled my head out of the sand and actually phoned them about it, the agent I spoke to was able to put a hold on the lien and set something in my record to indicate "is working to clear it up; don't harass or garnish wages further at this time".
posted by Lexica at 3:54 PM on April 8, 2010

Before you worry about it too much, first figure out if you were even legally required to file a tax return those years. If you didn't make very much money, probably not.

IRS.gov: Do You Need to File a Federal Income Tax Return?

That's for the 2009 tax year. The pertinent dollar amounts would be different for other tax years.

The IRS has copies of all your W-2s because your employers sent them copies, so you can get that information from the IRS is you need it.

So, Nthing call them.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:54 PM on April 8, 2010

nthing all of the above and - you say you don't think you owe money.

so, after you contact the IRS and your former employers to get all your old W-2s, check with your local United Way VITA program to see if you qualify for free tax preparation.

if you earned less than $49k in the years you failed to file, you should meet the United Way VITA qualification. Your return will be prepared for free by a qualified IRS-trained preparer (usually a student from your local accounting college) who is supervised by an experienced preparer.

don't let the preparation fee scare you off.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:17 PM on April 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

File an estimated return by the 15th and then hire a CPA to help you get up to date. You are not out of the ordinary. Many people fail to file, especially when withholding gets them within a few percent of the legal number. If you have been failing to file and owing huge sums that is a bigger issue, but in either event a competent CPA can walk you through the process of making things right.
posted by caddis at 6:59 PM on April 8, 2010

We had a professional tax preparer do them, for about $200 per year's return.

Actually, it was about 4 years worth of joint returns. But yeah, scoop up every possibly tax-related piece of paper, take it to a pro, have them sort it out. The sense of RELIEF once we got right with the IRS was like a physical weight off the shoulders.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:20 PM on April 8, 2010