About your spouse question - I went through this exact situation. Hid 4 years of unfiled taxes from my husband. When I finally broke down and told him, he was upset, but mostly because I didn't trust him enough to tell him sooner so we could tackle it together. We're still married 7 years later. The trust took time to rebuild, but being upfront about the problem and having a plan to fix it went a long way. What damaged our relationship wasn't the tax debt - it was the secrecy. My advice: Tell your wife before the passport issue forces your hand. Come with some research done and maybe even an appointment already scheduled with a tax professional. Show her you're taking responsibility and have a plan.

One important thing nobody's mentioned: if you've been filing extensions, the statute of limitations on assessment hasn't started running. The IRS generally has 3 years from the date you file a return to assess additional tax. Since you haven't filed, that clock hasn't started. But here's the good news - the IRS typically only looks back 6 years for unfiled returns unless they suspect fraud. If you voluntarily come forward and file your back returns before they contact you, you're in a much better position than if they find you first. Also, self-employed people often overestimate what they'll owe because they forget about all the legitimate business deductions they qualify for. A good tax pro might find you qualify for things like home office deduction, health insurance deduction, SEP IRA contributions, business mileage, etc.

Has anyone dealt with the IRS matching notice issue for missing K1s? I ignored including a zero-income K1 last year and got a CP2000 notice six months later. Huge headache to resolve, even though it ultimately didn't change my tax owed.

I went through almost the exact same situation last year with my LLC that had zero income but startup expenses. Here's what I learned the hard way - you definitely need to amend your return to include the K1, even with zero income. The IRS automated matching system will flag the discrepancy once they receive your business return with the K1. I tried to "wait and see" and ended up getting a CP2000 notice months later asking me to explain the missing K1. Even though it didn't change my tax liability, I had to spend time responding to the notice and dealing with the paperwork. The good news is that those startup expenses on your S-corp K1 will likely be deductible against your other income on your personal return. In my case, I actually ended up getting a small refund from the amendment because the business expenses reduced my overall tax liability. File the amendment sooner rather than later - it shows good faith effort to correct the error, and you'll avoid the potential hassle of dealing with IRS notices down the road. The 1040-X form isn't too complicated, especially if you use tax software that has an amendment feature.

Filed mine on Feb 5th and just got my refund yesterday! Took exactly 3 weeks. I was getting worried too but it finally came through. For what it's worth, I noticed the status changed from "processing" to "approved" about 2 days before the direct deposit hit my account. So if you're still seeing "processing" there might be hope it updates soon. Hang in there!

Filed my Oklahoma return on January 31st and finally got my refund this morning! Took about 3.5 weeks total. I was checking the status obsessively and it stayed on "processing" until Tuesday when it switched to "approved" - then the direct deposit hit today. For anyone still waiting, I know it's stressful but it seems like they're working through the backlog. The enhanced fraud prevention measures @Nick Kravitz mentioned are probably why it's taking longer, but at least they're being thorough. Hang in there everyone!

Has anyone tried just setting cost basis to zero when they can't track it? I'm in a similar situation but with much smaller amounts and wondering if it's worth the headache.

I went through something very similar last year with about $120k in DeFi sales. What saved me was reconstructing my cost basis using a combination of approaches: 1) Bank statements showing my original fiat deposits to exchanges 2) Email receipts from major purchases I could find 3) Using DeFiPulse and similar sites to look up historical token prices for dates I could remember making trades 4) Cross-referencing my wallet addresses on blockchain explorers to verify transaction dates I ended up with about 80% of my trades documented with reasonable accuracy. For the remaining 20%, I used conservative estimates (higher cost basis when uncertain) and documented my methodology clearly. The key thing I learned is that the IRS cares more about good faith effort than perfect precision. As long as you can show you tried to be accurate and didn't just make up numbers, you're in much better shape than someone who reports nothing or clearly lowballs their gains. For your $160k situation, I'd definitely invest some time in reconstruction rather than just guessing. Even if you can only recover 70% of your actual records, that's still going to be much more defensible than a rough estimate.

New Orleans here - filed Jan 15th and just got my refund last week! Hang in there everyone, they're definitely working through the backlog. My transcript showed movement about 2 weeks before the actual deposit hit my account. The wait is brutal but at least we know it's not just us dealing with this mess.

I'm also in Louisiana (Lake Charles area) and filed February 3rd - still showing "processing" with no updates. It's frustrating seeing the inconsistency in timing even within our state. Some people who filed after me are getting theirs while I'm still waiting. At least now I know it's a statewide issue and not something wrong with my return specifically. Thanks for posting this - was starting to think I was the only one!