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Unfilled taxes

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fundoomo

Junior Member
I have received a "Notice of Deficiency" from IRS, for over $46,000! I did not file my taxes for the years 2013 and 2014. Hence, IRS filed my taxes for me. They filed as "married filling SEPARATELY", and didn't claim any deductions.

If the taxes are filed as "married filing jointly", and mortgage interest deduction is taken, I would not owe any back taxes. In fact, I would get a refund. Unfortunately, I did not file the return and am kicking myself for my laziness and procrastination.

So, I am guessing this involves filling 2013 & 2014 returns. My taxes are quite straightforward (salaried employee, with a house mortgage). So I don’t need help in preparing the returns since I can do so myself. But I do need help in resolving this situation with IRS and FTB. I have no clue how to go about doing that.

The notice says that I have 60 days to dispute this in Tax court. So time is of the essence.

How do I fix this? Is this simple enough to fix by myself by contacting IRS? Or would I be better off with a lawyer representing me?

If you can’t help with this, can you kindly refer me to someone who handles this kind of cases?

thanks,
Mo
 


Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member

How do I fix this? Is this simple enough to fix by myself by contacting IRS? Or would I be better off with a lawyer representing me?

If you can’t help with this, can you kindly refer me to someone who handles this kind of cases?

thanks,
Mo
Well, I'll tell you the same thing I told you on the other site you asked this to save others from spending time duplicating the same thing. :)

Usually you would get at least one letter asking you to file the returns and then a notice of proposed assessment (NOPA) about this prior to getting the statutory notice of deficiency (SNOD). If the SNOD is the first notice you received, had you moved after you filed your last return? It would have been easier to deal with this earlier in the process. You are correct that the basic way to fix this problem is to prepare the returns you should have filed taking the credits and deductions you were entitled to claim and provide them to the IRS, attached as support to a copy of the SNOD and mailed to the office that sent you the SNOD. The problem is that once the SNOD is issued, the 90 days (not 60 days, see Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 6213(a)) to petition the Tax Court starts to run and cannot be extended. Even when that deadline passes the IRS may still fix the problem. If the IRS agrees with everything in the returns you submit then that is not a problem. But if the IRS does not agree with everything and that 90 days is gone the IRS may assess whatever tax it still thinks is owed and you cannot challenge that in court without first paying the entire liability, filing a claim for refund, and then when the refund claim is denied you would go to federal district court or the U.S. court of claims, not tax court.

If you really need to challenge this in tax court either because you need to resolve it without paying it first or because the case law on the disputed issues is more favorable in Tax Court you’d want to be sure to file that tax court petition timely. You and the IRS can still work it out after filing that petition and it may never get to court. In short, if you want to preserve all your options, you’d make sure that the petition is filed while also working with the IRS to resolve this, hopefully without a lot of pushback from the IRS. If you want to do that, you need a tax lawyer. I cannot recommend any lawyers for you in this forum, but there are various options for searching for lawyers that are available online. You can also try contacting the California for a list of lawyers who concentrate their practice in Tax.
 

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