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Something else to consider: check if you were actually due a refund for 2018 before assuming you owe money. Even if your employer didn't withhold, you might have qualified for credits like the Earned Income Credit depending on your situation. If you were owed a refund, there's no penalty for filing late (though you only have 3 years to claim a refund, which has passed for 2018 now). But definitely file regardless. Not filing when required is a much bigger problem than owing and not paying. The IRS is generally willing to work with people who file but can't pay right away.
Wait, are you saying if I was actually due a refund for 2018, I've completely lost it now? That would be awful! Though honestly with no withholding and my income level that year, I'm pretty sure I would have owed. But thank you for that explanation about the difference between not filing vs. owing but not paying. That helps clarify the priorities.
Unfortunately, yes. The IRS gives you 3 years from the original due date to file and claim a refund. For 2018 taxes (due April 2019), that deadline passed in April 2022. After that, any unclaimed refunds become government property. You're right to focus on just getting the return filed now regardless. The IRS views non-filers much more seriously than people who file but can't pay. Once you file, you'll have options for payment plans or even settlement offers if you genuinely can't afford what you owe.
Sunny Wang
I had almost the exact same thing happen (didn't file 2016 taxes, state came after me first). The IRS eventually found me about 2 years after the state did. They sent a bunch of scary letters and the penalties were pretty rough. Something nobody mentioned yet - if you owe a lot and don't pay, they can eventually place a lien on your property, garnish wages, or seize tax refunds from future years. They can also report to credit bureaus which tanked my credit score for a while. Just file the return and get on a payment plan if needed. The mental relief is worth it. Living with tax anxiety hanging over you is miserable.
How bad were the penalties by the time they caught up with you? I'm wondering what kind of financial hit OP is looking at after 5 years.
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Just to simplify AGI calculation: 1. Start with ALL income (wages, 1099, interest, dividends, capital gains, etc) 2. Subtract ONLY "above-the-line" deductions: - Traditional IRA contributions - Student loan interest - HSA contributions - Self-employed health insurance - SEP/SIMPLE/401k contributions for self-employed - Alimony paid (for pre-2019 divorces) - Educator expenses - Some business expenses Taxes withheld throughout the year have NOTHING to do with AGI. And standard/itemized deductions come AFTER AGI calculation.
What about 401k contributions through my employer? And health insurance premiums? I'm confused if those count as "above-the-line" deductions or not.
Employer 401k contributions and pre-tax health insurance premiums are already excluded from your W-2 Box 1 wages. They've already reduced your reported income before you even start calculating AGI. That's why they don't appear as separate "above-the-line" deductions on your tax return - they've already been accounted for. This is different from things like traditional IRA contributions which you make separately from your paycheck, so those need to be deducted as a specific adjustment to income.
StarSeeker
One thing that helped me understand AGI is looking at the 1040 form itself. If you look at the first page of your 1040, everything above the "adjusted gross income" line (line 11 on recent forms) is part of the AGI calculation. This includes all your income sources at the top, then all those adjustments/deductions in the "Income" section. Anything listed in the "Adjusted Gross Income" section gets subtracted to arrive at your final AGI. Standard/itemized deductions and qualified business income deductions all come AFTER the AGI line, so they don't affect AGI calculation at all.
Zoe Stavros
ā¢Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who responded. This makes so much more sense now. So in my original example with $230k gross income and $9,800 in deductions, my AGI would depend on WHICH deductions those are. If those $9,800 were all "above-the-line" deductions like traditional IRA, HSA, etc., then my AGI would be $220,200. But if some of those deductions were itemized deductions like mortgage interest or charitable donations, those wouldn't affect my AGI at all. And the $78k in taxes I paid throughout the year is completely irrelevant to AGI calculation. This clears up my confusion completely!
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One thing nobody's mentioned - are you claiming any tax credits? With your income level, you might qualify for the Saver's Credit (Form 8880) for your 401k contributions. Depending on your exact AGI, you could get up to 10% or 20% credit on your retirement contributions. Also, do you have any student loan interest, education expenses, or other potential deductions outside of what you mentioned? Those could potentially generate a refund if you're not accounting for them.
Rajiv Kumar
ā¢I had no idea about the Saver's Credit! I'll definitely look into that. I do have some student loan interest (about $1,200 last year) but I've been including that on my returns. I don't think I have any other major deductions I'm missing, but maybe I should double check. What's the income limit for the Saver's Credit? I'm worried I might make too much to qualify.
The Saver's Credit has phaseout limits that change annually. For the 2024 tax year (filing in 2025), the credit begins to phase out at $46,000 for single filers and is completely phased out at $71,000. With your income around $68,000, you might qualify for a partial credit, which could result in a small refund. Your student loan interest deduction is good to include - that's up to $2,500 in deductible interest annually. If you work from home at all, you might also want to check if you qualify for any home office deductions, especially if you're an independent contractor for any portion of your income. Every little bit helps!
Has anyone actually compared tax software to see if different programs give different refund amounts? Last year I tried my return on both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and got a $340 difference between them - apparently TurboTax missed a deduction that FreeTaxUSA caught. Maybe try running your numbers through a different program than what you've been using?
Ryan Kim
ā¢YES! This happened to me too. H&R Block online gave me a completely different result than Credit Karma Tax (now Cash App Taxes). Turned out H&R Block was correctly applying a credit that Cash App missed. Definitely worth trying a different software.
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Check if your old employer might have done a "forced rollover" of your 401k. This happened to my husband. He left a job in 2017, completely forgot about a small 401k (like $8k), and then in 2024 got a 1099-R out of nowhere. Turns out the company's plan administrator had changed and they did a forced transfer of inactive accounts under a certain dollar amount. They claimed they sent notices but we never got any. The money had been moved to some default IRA provider we'd never heard of. Call the company on the 1099-R and ask specifically about the source of funds and when the account was opened. Get as much info as possible about where the money came from originally.
Thank you! This sounds very similar to what might have happened to me. Did your husband end up owing taxes on the distribution? And did he have any luck getting the money back after all that time?
Yes, he did owe some taxes because they processed it as a distribution rather than a direct rollover, which was super annoying. We had to pay about $1,600 in taxes on it. We probably could have fought it, but the amount wasn't worth hiring a tax pro for. He was able to claim the remaining money though! We contacted the company, verified his identity, and they sent a check for the remaining amount (after the withholding they'd already taken out). Took about 3 weeks to get the check. If your situation is similar, definitely call them ASAP to claim your money before it potentially gets sent to the state as unclaimed property.
Leila Haddad
If it helps, you can check the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits at https://www.unclaimedretirementbenefits.com or your state's unclaimed property website. Sometimes forgotten 401ks end up there. Also, do you remember if you worked for a company that might have been acquired or merged with another? Sometimes during corporate restructuring, retirement plans get transferred to different administrators and people lose track.
Emma Johnson
ā¢That unclaimed benefits site is legit. I found an old pension I didn't even know I had from a summer job in college. Only about $3,200 but hey free money!
Dylan Cooper
I'm in a similar unmarried situation and just had a consultation with a CPA about this. Here's what might help: 1) Have you calculated the difference between what you'd gain by filing HOH vs what your boyfriend might lose in healthcare subsidies? Sometimes the higher-earning parent filing HOH and claiming the kids provides more overall family benefit even if there's a small premium increase. 2) Make sure you're considering the Child Tax Credit which is up to $2,000 per qualifying child for 2024 tax year. This could be significant with two kids. 3) Look at childcare expenses if applicable - the Child and Dependent Care Credit might be more valuable to you as the higher earner. The best solution is usually to run the numbers both ways (you claim kids vs. he claims kids) and see which produces the best overall result for your household.
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Sofia Perez
Did either of you use those Premium Tax Credits for the Obamacare plan? If so, be super careful about changing who claims the kids because it can cause major headaches with the Form 8962 reconciliation. My partner and I did this wrong one year and ended up owing $3200 back to the IRS because the subsidy was calculated based on different info than what we filed.
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Andre Dubois
ā¢OMG I didn't even think about that. Yes, he definitely gets a subsidy that makes the insurance affordable. How do we avoid a big surprise bill? Did you find a way to fix this issue going forward?
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Sofia Perez
ā¢To avoid the surprise bill, you need to update your Marketplace application ASAP to reflect your actual tax filing intentions. Log into healthcare.gov (or your state marketplace) and report a "life change" to update who will be claiming the kids as tax dependents. For fixing it going forward, we set a calendar reminder for every December to review our tax and insurance situation before the new year. We also printed out IRS Publication 974 which explains the Premium Tax Credit rules and read through the sections on shared policies. It's complicated but worth understanding! The good news is that if you're proactive about informing the Marketplace, you can usually avoid any negative impact on either the tax or insurance side.
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