4 ms·
Spoken like someone who has never been penalized by the IRS. If you get a zealous agent, they will tack on anything even remotely plausible to nail you with.
by logfromblammo 10y ago
Spoken like someone who has never been penalized by the IRS.
If you get a zealous agent, they will tack on anything even remotely plausible to nail you with. If you get an "it's a job" agent, they will do the minimum amount of work to process your file out of their inbox.
The difference between the two can be thousands of dollars, not just hundreds.
- loeg 10y agoIt really depends on how you underpaid or underreported your taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_penalties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_penalties Note that you can only be penalized if you screwed up. If you've paid your taxes appropriately, there is no penalty. So yeah, to the best of my ability I've filed my taxes accurately and paid the amount due, and I've never had to pay an IRS penalty.
- logfromblammo 10y agoI have never been entirely convinced that I have neither screwed up somehow in filing US federal tax forms, nor paid the minimum possible amount in tax. Even if I were to somehow correctly claim every applicable reduction, and keep all the necessary supporting documentation, I still couldn't be certain that some faceless IRS agent wouldn't later tax my time by arbitrarily making me defend my filings in detail. Being objectively correct is not adequate defense against IRS penalties. If you have never had to pay one, it may just be because the IRS computer never (randomly?) spat out your number for further scrutiny by a human.