I got this letter last month too!! Found out it happened because I had a W-2 from a job I worked for only 2 weeks and forgot to include it on my return. Wasn't identity theft at all, just me messing up lol. Still had to go through verification tho.

I went through this same situation about 6 months ago and it was stressful at first, but turned out fine. The key thing to remember is that receiving an identity verification letter doesn't necessarily mean your identity was actually stolen - the IRS has become much more cautious and flags returns for various reasons. In my case, it was triggered because I had started a side gig and reported 1099 income for the first time. The verification process took about 2 weeks once I called (took me several attempts to get through), and my refund was released 5 weeks after that. Make sure you have your prior year return, current year return, and the letter when you call. Also, try calling early in the morning (8 AM) or later in the afternoon - I had better luck getting through during those times. Don't panic, this is more common than you'd think and gets resolved once you verify your identity.

Important note from someone who's been audited over this exact issue: DO NOT just pick the allocation that gives you the biggest refund without considering how it affects the other person! The IRS computers are specifically programmed to flag returns where the total PTC allocations don't match up. If you claim allocations that don't make sense (like 1% of APTC but 100% of the max credit), you're basically asking for an audit. The correct approach is to allocate based on who was actually covered by the policy and their portion of the household income.

This is exactly the kind of situation where you need to be really careful about how you allocate the Premium Tax Credit! As someone who works with tax preparation, I see this confusion all the time. The reason you're seeing such wild swings in your refund is because of how the PTC calculation works. When you allocate 1% of the APTC but claim a higher percentage of the maximum credit, you're essentially telling the IRS you received very little advance payment but are entitled to a large credit - which creates that artificial $8K+ refund. However, this approach will likely cause major problems for your father's return and could trigger an audit since the allocations need to make sense when viewed together. For your situation with $43,250 income versus your father's higher income, I'd recommend allocating based on your proportional share of the total household income that the policy was covering. If your dad makes twice what you do, something like a 33/67 split might be more appropriate than 50/50. The key is finding an allocation that reflects reality - who was actually covered by the policy and what percentage of the household income each person represents. Don't just chase the biggest refund, because the IRS will eventually catch discrepancies between family members' returns.

3 Pro tip: check the Transamerica website for an "Important Tax Information" section. After dealing with this same issue, I discovered they actually have a webpage listing the correct EINs to use for different retirement accounts they manage. The EIN on my form was outdated because they'd restructured some of their subsidiaries. Also, it's worth noting that TurboTax sometimes has these EINs in their system already. Try clicking the "help" button when you're entering the 1099-R information, and search for "Transamerica EIN" in their knowledge base.

9 Just a heads up, if you can't resolve this quickly, consider filing a tax extension using Form 4868. This gives you until October 15th to file without penalty. You'd still need to pay any estimated taxes owed by the regular deadline, but at least you won't get penalized for late filing while sorting out this document issue. I had a similar EIN problem last year with Principal Financial and it took almost 3 weeks to get the correct information. The extension saved me from late filing penalties.

I had almost this exact situation last year! My license had expired during COVID and I didn't even realize it when I filed. I was also counting on a refund advance from H&R Block that I thought I might lose access to. What ended up happening was my return was accepted normally - no questions about the license. When I called about the advance issue, they actually had a separate system for handling the advances that wasn't directly tied to the return submission. I explained my situation, gave them my application number from the original approval email, and they were able to reactivate it for me. Took about 35 minutes on the phone but they sorted it out. The advance hit my account about 2 days later, and then my actual refund came about 3 weeks after that.

This is really helpful information from everyone! I'm dealing with something similar - I accidentally put the wrong expiration year on my license info when filing through FreeTaxUSA. Reading through all these responses, it sounds like the IRS won't reject my return for this mistake, which is a relief. @Javier Cruz - thanks for starting this thread, it's exactly what I needed to see. The consensus seems to be that DL expiration dates aren't part of their automated verification system. @Chloe Robinson - your experience with H&R Block gives me hope! I'm in a similar boat with a refund advance that I'm worried about losing access to. Going to try calling their dedicated tax support line like @Omar Hassan suggested rather than going through general customer service. Has anyone here actually had their return accepted with a completely expired license (like expired over a year ago)? Just want to make sure there's not some threshold where it does become an issue.

If it was just one day of training and you never got paid, are you sure you were actually added to their payroll system? Sounds like they might have had you fill out paperwork but never processed it before closing. If that's the case, technically no income was paid to you, so there wouldn't be a W2.

If you filled out all the hiring paperwork but never received any payment, there's a good chance you were never actually entered into their payroll system. Many employers don't process new hires into payroll until after their first day or week of work. Since you mentioned you never got paid for that training day, the employer likely never reported any wages to the IRS under your SSN. This means there wouldn't be a W2 to find because no taxable income was actually paid out. However, if you want to be absolutely certain, I'd recommend checking your Social Security earnings record at ssa.gov once the year's data is updated (usually by fall). This will show all wages reported by employers. If nothing shows up for that IHOP location, you can be confident there's no missing W2 to worry about. The bottom line: if no wages were paid, there's no taxable income to report, and you shouldn't stress about a missing W2 that probably doesn't exist.