Has anyone done the math on whether the rental actually makes financial sense? $340/week is about $17,680 per year. You could buy a decent used Prius for less than that and have an asset at the end of the year instead of nothing.

Don't forget you can also deduct a portion of your cell phone plan since it's required for Uber, plus any accessories you buy for customers (water, chargers, etc). And if you pay for any special cleaning or maintenance of the Tesla that's not included in the rental agreement, those are deductible business expenses too. I drive for Uber using a rental and my tax person helped me save a ton by identifying all these little deductions that add up.

One thing nobody's mentioned yet - if you're missing documents from that tax year, you can contact the financial institutions directly. Most banks and investment companies keep records for 7+ years and can provide statements showing your transactions. I had to do this when I moved last year and lost a box of financial documents. Called Vanguard and they emailed me statements going back 5 years within an hour. Same with my bank - they had all my mortgage interest statements available to download from their portal. Even if you end up paying what the IRS says you owe, it's worth gathering the documentation to make sure you're not overpaying. CP2000 notices often don't account for your cost basis on investments, which can make the tax due appear much higher than it actually is.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned this, but you might want to check if you reported the transactions on the wrong form. This happened to me - I reported stock sales on Schedule D but forgot to include Form 8949, so the IRS computer thought I hadn't reported them at all. When I called and explained this to the IRS agent, they checked my return and confirmed the income was actually there, just not on the correct form. They adjusted the proposed assessment significantly because I had reported most of the income, just not in the right place. Another common issue is when brokerages report gross proceeds but don't report basis to the IRS. So the IRS thinks the entire sale amount is profit when in reality you might have only gained a small amount or even had a loss.

I've been in the credit card rewards game for about 5 years now, and here's what my CPA advised me: For the 1099-MISCs issued in your personal name, you're good to include them on Schedule C if they're genuinely part of your business activity. The business substance matters more than whose name is on the form. For your spouse though, we set up a separate Schedule C for her portion. It's the cleanest way to handle it with minimal risk. Yes, it means she pays her own SE tax on her earnings, but it avoids any questions about commingling income. Another option: if you want everything under one Schedule C, consider setting up a formal partnership agreement between you and your spouse. We chose not to go this route because it added more complexity than just doing two separate Schedule Cs.

Kinda late to this thread but something nobody has mentioned - if your spouse isn't actively involved in running the business and just lets you use their referral links, the IRS might see this as assignment of income which is a no-no. You can't just move income between people even if you're married. Make sure your spouse is actually doing something in the business if you're going to claim their 1099-MISC income as business income on either your Schedule C or theirs.

One thing to remember about the American Opportunity Credit - it can only be claimed for the first 4 years of postsecondary education. If you were in a 5-year program or went to grad school, your parents wouldn't have been eligible to claim it for the extra years beyond your bachelor's. I got confused about this too because my dad claimed it for my undergrad years, but then when I started my master's program, we found out we could only use the Lifetime Learning Credit, which gives you less money back. Worth checking if this might be creating some of the confusion with your forms!

If you really want to be 100% sure, ask your parents to create an account on the IRS website and get their tax transcripts for those years. The transcript will show exactly what credits were claimed and for how much. My son and I had a similar confusion, and the tax transcripts cleared everything up instantly.

Be careful about FBAR requirements too! If your foreign accounts total over $10,000 at any point during the year, you needed to file FBAR reports. The penalties for missing these can be WAY worse than the actual tax penalties. I'm a dual citizen and got hammered with a $50K penalty for "willful" failure to file FBARs for 5 years, even though I didn't owe much in actual taxes. The IRS is extremely aggressive about offshore accounts right now.

One important thing to note is that different cryptocurrencies are treated differently for tax purposes. If you've been staking or mining, that's considered income at the time received. If you've just been buying and selling, those are capital gains. And if you've been doing crypto-to-crypto trades, EACH of those is a taxable event! I learned this the hard way after doing hundreds of trades between different coins thinking I only needed to pay taxes when I converted back to USD. Had to pay a CPA $4,500 to sort out the mess.