Talking With the Taxpayer Advocate: The IRS Is Under Stress

[progree]

4. "much more difficult to do an Estimate for the coming year, until you've completed the prior year"

As if all of that wasn't enough, now Congress is still BEGGING for an extension to the 1st Qtr 2021 Estimate filing. Because the IRS, in all their wisdom, extended the Individual filing date, but left the 1st Qtr Estimates date as 4/15. So now I have clients e-mailing me in confusion. I should mention that it's much more difficult to do an Estimate for the coming year, until you've completed the prior year. So now, I have to go through and see which clients I need to essentially still complete in the next couple of days, so they can make their Estimates by Thursday.

I feel for you and your clients ... I'll have to decide how much Q1 estimated tax to pay real soon ... what's more, if one fucks up and pays too little (and one can't just make up too little in Q1 by paying more in Q2 and later), then TurboTax requires one to file a paper return for Minnesota state taxes.

For federal returns, if one "annualizes" to avoid the penalty (a huge chunk of my income is in Q4), one has to file a federal paper return -- at least that is what I experienced with TurboTax in the 2018 tax year.

And now the OP article tells me that filing a paper return, besides being a silly extra hassle, is going to tie them up in knots.

And I still have this crap hanging over my head -- I got a notice from the IRS in November falsely claiming that I didn't declare $10,000 of income -- and that I owe $2,900 in taxes (no I'm not in the 29% tax bracket... some secondary effects result in that oversized tax amount).

The IRS says I didn't report income that I reported 👀 😲😭💔
https://www.democraticunderground.com/11212509

I sent in proof that I had declared the supposedly missing piece of income -- In February I got a notice that they needed more time to investigate, sigh, and I'll hear within 90 days. Have heard nothing since, but 90 days doesn't run out until early May.

It really sucks having this hang over my head, and wondering if I'm going to end up in an endless back and forth as penalties and interest accumulate.