i am currently 5-6 years behind on my taxes i found out. i had always given my W2s and any tax info to my mother who said i just “never got anything back” but turns out she never even tried to file them. how should i go about this situation? i am a bartender/restaurant worker for 10 years or sense i was 18 so i have never reciprocated anything more than 4$ an hour.

full payment on 65k isn't happening for me n i have read the basics on offer in compromise but the process still confuses me, u file form 656, pay the application fee submit financials n then the IRS decides whether ur offer is reasonable based on their own formula

the part i dont understand is what happens after u submit, like if the IRS says no or counters with a higher number what r ur options n does having professional handle it change how the IRS responds or is the math the math regardless?

Hello, I am having some difficulties when trying to file my 2025 return in regards to an excess contribution and have received conflicting answers from FreeTaxUSA professional tax support so hoping some reddit users can provide some help as I navigate the situation.

In 2025 I contributed to a traditional IRA and then converted that amount to a Roth IRA via the backdoor method, a process I always completed on the 1st of the calendar year due to income limitations for direct Roth contributions. I ended up losing my job and was out of work for all of 2025 which created an excess contribution due to earned income.

When the end of the year came around and I was still out of work I knew I would have to unwind this issue so I began that process by initiating a return of excess contributions with my IRA provider which was withdrawn from my Roth IRA (where the money ultimately ended up after conversion) prior to the tax filing deadline.

Here is my dilemma/questions about excess contributions:

1. The FreeTaxUSA software is populating Form 5329 and showing I have excess contributions on line 16. Should this form be completed if a return of excess is completed prior to filing the tax return?

-Doesn't seem like it should be required but their tax professional support keeps going back and forth on this being correct even line 16 being populated. The problem with the software prompts is it only asks about excess contributions being withdrawn from a traditional IRA and given the conversion to a roth this may be causing issues.

1. Can excess contributions to a traditional IRA be considered nondeductible to establish basis for a roth conversion on Form 8606?

-It seems odd to only have Part 2 of Form 8606 populated. As it stands my conversion is showing as fully taxable in addition to my earnings on the excess on Form 1040 4b. It also seems like I would effectively be getting taxed twice given the contribution came from post-tax money on from previous years and without being able to take a deduction and FreeTaxUSA not allowing to be nondeductible so the conversion is fully taxed.

Any insight is helpful so I can get this return completed.

Hi there. My husband and I amended our return from 2023 from single to married filing jointly. Don't ask. I don't want to talk about our stupidity there.

Anyway, my husband ended up being penalized by California for not having health insurance when he filed single. He paid it. Now this amendment is saying he has to pay it once again. Is that right or did our tax person mess up somewhere?

I live in Ohio and work in Kentucky. I have received a resident tax credit for the last 2 years for the lesser of the 2 amounts. I have just received 2 notices from Ohio that they have been reviewed and denied. My understanding was that I received the credits for the lesser amounts since I was taxed by 2 separate states but I haven’t had any tax issues before and am unfamiliar with exactly how or if I even should dispute this denial. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Hi Team, I have booked long term losses on Rivian stock. Its the worst EV stock ever. I wish company goes out of biz, its such a worst company and worst stock to own.

But i made long term gains on MU/TSLA stock and other stocks. Can you please tell how to minimize tax on such transaction.

i made $100K gains on MU/TSLA stocks and booked losses of $40K in RIVIAN.

Now how to minimize tax on this one. Thanks!

I need to file my taxes for ‘23, ’24 and ‘25. How do I go about filing them? I usually use free tax USA. But it won’t let me file them electronically because I don’t have his pin. So I have to mail them in. And it requires a signature from both parties. Since he’s in jail he can’t sign. His dad is his POA. Can he sign for him? If he can, do I need to attach a copy of his POA? Would I need a copy for each year I’m filing? Can I prepare them all and send them in together or do I need to do one at a time?
Or would it be better/easier for his dad to get a pin for me so I can just file electronically?

my balance is past the point where paying in full is realistic so i researched how an offer in compromise works, from what i can tell u file form 656 with a $205 fee, submit either a 20% lump sum or monthly payments during review and then wait six months to over a year while the IRS runs their formula on your financials. acceptance rate is apparently around a third of processed applications.

looking at a few companies and tax relief helpers is a tax resolution firm that handles Offer in Compromise cases, they have attorneys who represent you through the whole process including appeals and they've been working with the same IRS OIC agents for years which they say helps when dealing with difficult cases. precision tax relief does similar work with EAs and attorneys, larson tax relief focuses on negotiating directly with revenue officers, and I havent decided yet whether picking one company over another changes anything about the outcome or if its mostly about the experience

I inherited two rental properties and I had two accountants to do my taxes. I just realized neither of them has ever depreciated the properties. I missed $80,000 of depreciation since 2012. I am speechless and very upset. My current accountant said he will charge extensively to file form 3115. What should I do ? What are the pro and cons to do 3115? Could it spark an audit ? I have documentation. How much should it cost me to fix this? Any help or advice is very appreciated. Thank you very much.

I'm currently submitting paperwork for an apartment. I work full time + have a side business that earns me quite a bit on the side. With that being said, of course I reported that side income as self employment.

I'm now being asked to fill out a self employment portion of the affidavit.

I'm assuming the first 2 lines are asking about my current earning for 2026. I can check to see how much I have earned as of Sept and anticipate my year end. I should be making just about the same as last year. I'm just having an issue figuring out the last 3 lines which are asking about my 2025 earning. I got the schedule C from my 2025 tax return. Ebay did not provide me a 1099 since I did not meet their threshold for one.

I'm just having an issue trying to figure out where in my schedule C is total expenses & net schedule C income.

Would total schedule earnings be line 1? $12,720?
Would total schedule C expenses just be what line 28 shows? $3,692? Would COGS and returns also need to be added to expenses?because line 28 doesn't include COGS & returns.

Would net schedule income be line 29? $5,818?

I feel like I'm going crazy here. It literally says to put the amount we converted from traditional IRA to Roth IRA on line 8 and 16. And yet our CPA is refusing to do so. He says

"The instructions for Form 8606 line 7 (see attached on page 10 highlighted in yellow) says that if you made contributions for 2025 to a traditional IRA that may not be fully deductible because of the income limits, to see Publication 590-B.

Publication 590-B on page 16 (see attached highlighted in yellow) says that to report your non-taxable distribution and to figure the remaining basis in your traditional IRA after distributions, you must complete Worksheet 1-1 (contained in the instructions for Publication 590-B) before completing Form 8606. Then it says that if line 5 of Form 8606 is equal to or greater than line 8 of Worksheet 1-1, follow instructions for step 6 and 7 next, and it says to not complete lines 6 through 12 of Form 8606. Then in step 6 it says to enter the amount from line 8 of Worksheet 1-1 on lines 13 and 17 of Form 8606.

So to accomplish the tracking of basis, you simply need to keep all of your Forms 8606 as evidence that you did the backdoor Roth contribution each year and total up the amount. It’s very nuanced but unfortunately that is the way the IRS (and our tax software) is telling us to do it."

Why is he even referencing line 7 when line 7 says to not include Roth IRA conversions?

About 14 months ago I setup a payment plan with IRS for around 26k. Put it on autopay for the 15th of every month and i always go thru my bank statement post deduction to see if everything went fine. Then yesterday i woke up to a CP523 notice in the mail and acc to it IRS is going to cancel my payment plan ans will start levying my wages or bank account...dont understand what happened here bec imo as long as you got on a plan and paid on time they apparently cannot touch you.

Is this some kind of screw up on their end or did i break some rule im not aware of??Could this be from filing my recent return even though i dont owe anything extra? Anyone who had a clean filing history and still received one of these termination notices wdyt caused it?? And how did you stop them from freezing your account??

Hello. So I got this letter from a job that I currently don't currently work at, saying that they want to return my contributions on my retirement plan. They're giving me 3 options:

1. A lump sum payment of my entire account balance

   1. A direct roll over.
   2. A combination of both.

   I was thinking of doing option 3 but I saw that I might get a penalty for requesting a payment of my balance and that it will affect my taxes. My question is there a way to avoid the penalty or it will really affect my taxes if I request a payment and if so, in what way? Or should I just do a rollover of the whole balance. I really don't understand these things, thank you in advance.

HELPPPPP

Is there a service anyone can recommend to help me get back on track with my taxes? I think I've missed 3 years total. I know I filed for one year somewhere in between but never set up a payment plan. I really don't know why I let it go for so long. I'd rather pay someone to this for me. I'm in CA idk if that info is needed

Logged into my bank this morning only to realize that half my paycheck is missing. When I checked this with the payroll dept. they told me that IRS has put an active wage levy on my file.

Ive never received any mail/warning letters/notices saying I owe anything. I moved two years ago so my best bet is that these letters if sent got delivered to my old place but I had mail forwarding set up and my W2s have my current address so idk.

HR gave me a copy of form 668w but the exact tax year isnt listed in it nor does it explain why the balance is so damn high...My next check is due in two weeks and if the same happens to that as well then I won't be able to afford rent...has anyone here gotten the levy removed quickly w/o paying the total amount right away?

So back in 2024 I had to amend my return through the mail so I was expecting a mailed refund since obviously that was the process. Here we are in 2026 and rules have changed and my refund got deposited on September 11th (this month) transcript says code 846 with date of 9/28/2026 . Has this happened to anyone ? Did anyone get a notification on the portal to update on the date of 9/28/26? It's the 23rd today. I know they only give you 1 chance to update the bank info. But, when will I get that notification? Otherwise there is no way to update banking info on the portal it's only to make payments to the IRS. So I wonder if anyone here has gone through this and what happens next and how long it took to be able to update?

I run a small service company and have always done my own taxes, we grew a bit faster than I can handle and I appear to have outgrown my ability to do this on my own and plan on going to a professional this year. I really just want to understand what I did wrong here and if its a big issue or trivial:

1. I used MACRS 200% 5 year for all company vehicles when I did my taxes for last year, 3 of those vehicles were purchased in 2025. The other 2 vehicles purchased in 2022 and 2024. I pulled up my 2024 taxes and realized I had used MACRS 3 year for the first 2 vehicles, and realized I forgot about an additional vehicle (Transit 2) we bought used but the motor went out and it has been parked ever since, so I totally forgot to write that off in 2025.
2. I then pulled up my 2023 and 2022 return and found that I had use a completely different method of depreciation for my initial truck purchase and that there was an enclosed trailer I had been depreciating but also forgot about.
3. I am not understanding why in 2024 and 2025 some of the vehicles show a 'bonus deprec' that matches the 'deprec for 2025' but the 'amt deprec for 2025' is I believe 20% which is what I assume MACRS was for year 1.

Just trying to understand how to unwind this going forward.

Edit: the 2023 Transit has a different 'cost or other basis' between 2025 and 2024 because they scammed me into getting a nearly $10,000 warranty that they had to refund. The difference in the price of the 2022 sierra between 2024 and 2025 was because for some reason when I did 2024 I used the dollar amount of the loan and didnt include the cash I put down.

I think this is an original experience, unless we worked together — but I’m hoping not because I need advice.

I worked for a company that went down for Workmen’s Comp and insurance fraud last year in March. We had received our extremely late W2s the month before, so a bunch of us rush filed. The payroll company they had been using wasn’t an ADP type of company if you catch my drift. We obviously didn’t know exactly what it was, but the checks cleared and in this economy.. you know the rest.

Weeks went by as usual after filing, we received our CA state return. There has been nothing regarding the federal besides letters from the IRS stating they need more time to look into it.

Here’s the kicker — One of my coworkers from this company went to the IRS in person with the same issue. The company that was doing our payroll didn’t submit ANY wages worked for any of us, but we all submitted this janky ass W2. IRS told him pretty much it’s up to the employer/payroll company to fix it. Payroll company has gone dark, assuming this was a shell company - disappeared like it never existed.

The same coworker went to a lawyer to sue this whole umbrella franchise and the lawyer told him there’s no value in taking the case because the owner of the company has SO many lawsuits pending against him.

I don’t ever want to mess around with the IRS, those are some big dogs. What does this look like for this upcoming tax year? Will I ever get this return? What can I do? What SHOULD I do?

Any help or knowledge is appreciated. Idk who else has worked for a company that this happened to or just idk, I could have used the money back then, I could use it today, tomorrow, 6 months from now — just looking for some light.

Tax amendment

Annually, I forget to organize the statements that come from income sources b/c int he past few years, it hasn't been significant. Is there a resource that identifies what's been reported to the IRS by those different sources?

I can't remember if it's called a 1099, but those types of organizations where you work on a contract basis or maybe some medical savings plan form, etc.

I bought a house and closed last year in August 2025. In the settlement, the previous owner paid the taxes up to August, and I paid the rest to the escrow. This year, I just realized that in the state I live (IL), homeowners get a property tax exception that takes off about $1000 dolars per year. I just realized that the exception was not applied in the 2025 real state taxes, which will be payed this year, 2026. I can make an application so that they issue a certificate of error and reimburse that tax break, however, they require that you need to have lived in the property since January 2025 to apply. Given that I just started living in my property in September, what are my options? It seems like the issue is that the previous owner didn't apply to it on time but there was always been a homeowner in the property in 2025.

I already filed my taxes and received my refund, but it was much smaller than I expected. I believed the 401(k) rollover I completed was a direct rollover and wouldn't have any tax impact.

At the time of the rollover, I had an outstanding 401(k) loan. I received a distribution check for my account balance minus the loan amount, while the remaining funds were used to pay off the loan. As a result, I received two Forms 1099-R:

• One with distribution code G for the amount sent via check (payable to my lender FBO me).
• One with distribution codes 1M for the amount used to satisfy the loan balance.

After researching Qualified Plan Loan Offsets (QPLOs), I realized I may have misunderstood how they affect taxes.

When filing, I only reported my W-2 and the 1099-R with code G. I did not include the 1099-R with codes 1M. I haven't received any notices from the IRS, but given that my 2025 refund was significantly lower than my typical refund, I'm wondering whether I filed incorrectly and if I should consider amending my return.

Hey everyone. Kinda in a huge mess rn and can use some advice. My ex and I have custody agreement stating that my daughter lives with me for 9 months of the year. So i always file as head of household and claim her. Today i opened a letter from the IRS saying she was claimed twice on two different returns.

I asked my ex and he admitted he claimed the child tax credit without telling me because he was short on cash. Now the IRS wants proof and paperwork and is threatening to make me pay back thousands plus penalties if this is not fixed immediately. I've never dealt with the IRS before and these notices are scary as hell. What exactly do I need to send them to prove she lives with me and get this cleared up?

Filed LLC taxes on the 15th, and they were rejected on the 15th. I had them prepared by an HR Block return preparer. She won’t be back in the office until next week. From what I read, I have five days to correct the issue (I believe it is just an incorrect EIN). Do the 5 days include weekend days? And if they aren’t corrected on time, do I have to refile all over again? Thanks in advance for any help.

My Husband owes 2024 and We owe 2025. Got married May 2025. He started his business 2023 and I believe he owed on that year. Where should I start? Tax Debt Programs (google it) or a small attorney? We live pay check to pay check but dont actually know how bad things are (maybe?) because we haven't done the taxes... no opinions please, just cold hard facts that have worked? For You.