Tax filing

[mc z]

What is the name of your state?California, Married 1997. Second marriage for both of us. I earn 70k she earns 25k. We have a 6 yr. old daughter. We have a house together with income property. Wife secretly retained attorney on august 17, 2005. shortly afterwards we began counseling. By early October we had began a "structured separation", She moved out. We have been in counseling since. Recently she has stopped attending counseling, not sure if she will continue. She has submitted financial demands of me in a hand written note. I have not been served with any papers as yet. We just met at our accountants to file jointly as we have done every year. Any and all of our Tax returns from previous years are missing and she claims she does not have them. I need last years return to file properly for 2004. Our accountants records are corrupted and cannot be retrieved. My questions are as follows:
1. Is filing jointly still the way to go?
2. I'm sure she or her attorney have our tax returns, can I request them from her attorney in a way that would unsure that they give them to me.Or should I just ignore this issue and file an extension. Our joint tax return would be approx. 5k
Thank you mc z

[LdiJ]

Originally Posted by mc z

What is the name of your state?California, Married 1997. Second marriage for both of us. I earn 70k she earns 25k. We have a 6 yr. old daughter. We have a house together with income property. Wife secretly retained attorney on august 17, 2005. shortly afterwards we began counseling. By early October we had began a "structured separation", She moved out. We have been in counseling since. Recently she has stopped attending counseling, not sure if she will continue. She has submitted financial demands of me in a hand written note. I have not been served with any papers as yet. We just met at our accountants to file jointly as we have done every year. Any and all of our Tax returns from previous years are missing and she claims she does not have them. I need last years return to file properly for 2004. Our accountants records are corrupted and cannot be retrieved. My questions are as follows:
1. Is filing jointly still the way to go?
2. I'm sure she or her attorney have our tax returns, can I request them from her attorney in a way that would unsure that they give them to me.Or should I just ignore this issue and file an extension. Our joint tax return would be approx. 5k
Thank you mc z

I can imagine only very limited circumstances where you would need your prior year's tax return in order to file taxes for the current year. Therefore, WHY do you need last year's return?

If your accountant's records are corrupted and cannot be retrieved, then you may want to consider getting a new accountant...one that is smart enough to back up their records.

I am an accountant and a tax preparer.