It seems to also argue that we all have claims for lost interest on what we paid to the IRS during the period in question, but that's a stretch. I am getting Wesley Snipes tax advisor vibes here and will move along.
It argues no such thing. Of the 20 instances of the word "interest", 19 are obviously referring to the interest that the IRS will charge you on your balance if you don't pay your taxes by the due date. The one remaining one is this:
> Overpayment interest for the 2020–2023 disaster period.
and refers to the interest that the IRS will pay you if they owe you money (a refund) that they don't manage to return to you in a timely manner.
> Without IRS or congressional action, outcomes may unfairly favor the “well advised” over the “unaware.”
Part of the governments job should be to make sure those with expensive advisors do not end up much better off than those who do their own taxes with little knowledge of tax law.
The purpose of taxes is not to tax the dumb extra.
The designed purpose of the IRS is to raise funds for governance. It's been captured and drained of resources by the capital class so that it's actual operational purpose is making sure that rich people pay as few taxes as possible by looking the other way when they don't obey the law.
Yet another insurmountable bug in capitalism - those with the capital make the rules, and usually the new rules allow them to accumulate further capital. Rinse and repeat.
A super simple fix is to encourage the rich to have more children. If they have 6 children and divide their wealth 6 ways, that rebalances wealth inequality every generation.
Easy enough to do via tax policy too. Eg. 10% tax reduction per child.
> For COVID-19, a federal disaster declaration was in effect from January 20, 2020, through May 11, 2023. [...] As noted, tens of millions of taxpayers have been assessed penalties or interest for late filings or payments during these years.
I'm a little surprised that many people are late with their tax filings.
It’s not late filings as much as late payments (late quarterly estimated taxes, under-withholding beyond safe harbor rules, etc.)
Lots of people who are self-employed or who make a high W-2 income and receive irregular payments/gains (bonuses, RSU vests, capital gains) fall into this category.
Late filings are almost trivial to avoid; late payments are significantly harder to entirely avoid as, depending on your tax situation, many of the payments are due 12, 9, 6, or 3 months earlier than April 15.
I suppose. I've had years in the past where I had sporadic self-employment income, and I filed estimated payments only for the quarters where I had income, maybe even was late or combined a couple of quarters every now and then. I never got penalized as long as the amount I owed for the year had been paid by April 15. Maybe I was a small enough fish that they just didn't care.
This site is legit. It looks off because DOGE fired a lot of people last year and mandated the use of AI for public facing content like this so it's the equivalent of something a first week intern would draft before they got taught basic professionalism.
Seriously. This reads like self-promotion of a bad YouTube channel or something. It's amateurish, full of self-aggrandizement and opinions. This has no place coming from our gov't.
Do you think it looks official? Or does it look like someone spent $10 on a 3rd world rando to make a site on Wordpress and a spoofed URL and didn't even bother to make it part of the official site.
You mean the thing that has been the source of many cybersecurity issues for years because fonts w/ ambiguous characters and varying levels of "how closely are you actually reading the URL"?
The very thing where sites like gmai1.com that look exactly like the real site phish creds?
Or things that even Google has issues with subdomains?
> You mean the thing that has been the source of many cybersecurity issues for years because fonts w/ ambiguous characters and varying levels of "how closely are you actually reading the URL"?
The very thing where sites like gmai1.com that look exactly like the real site phish creds?
Yes, that’s the one.
If I’m really paranoid, I’ll:
1.) avoid providing data to that page
2.) cross-reference host IP
3.) find the page on the original URL via search index
> The IRS should quickly develop a means to allow taxpayers to file their claims electronically and implement it immediately. The IRS and taxpayers do not need paper Forms 843 clogging up the system.
I'll save everybody else 120s: if you didn't get penalized for filing your taxes late during covid, move on.
It seems to also argue that we all have claims for lost interest on what we paid to the IRS during the period in question, but that's a stretch. I am getting Wesley Snipes tax advisor vibes here and will move along.
It argues no such thing. Of the 20 instances of the word "interest", 19 are obviously referring to the interest that the IRS will charge you on your balance if you don't pay your taxes by the due date. The one remaining one is this:
> Overpayment interest for the 2020–2023 disaster period.
and refers to the interest that the IRS will pay you if they owe you money (a refund) that they don't manage to return to you in a timely manner.
(All of this is explained on the main IRS website: https://www.irs.gov/payments/interest)
> I am getting Wesley Snipes tax advisor vibes here and will move along.
From the IRS?
It's not just if you filed late. It also says payments "due any time within that window were not late until after July 10, 2023."
So for example, if you were a contractor who paid your taxes on April 15 (rather than making quarterly payments).
Shit, that was me. I never pay my quarterly payments, it's easier (for me) to let the government send me a bill lol.
Used to do the same, realized the penalty was so minor compared to my time filing quarterly.
I think the interest rate is 7% so if you have other debts, not making the quarterly payments is probably the cheapest loan you can get.
[dead]
true enough.
> Without IRS or congressional action, outcomes may unfairly favor the “well advised” over the “unaware.”
Part of the governments job should be to make sure those with expensive advisors do not end up much better off than those who do their own taxes with little knowledge of tax law.
The purpose of taxes is not to tax the dumb extra.
you're right but the purpose of the IRS is to tax the dumb extra.
The designed purpose of the IRS is to raise funds for governance. It's been captured and drained of resources by the capital class so that it's actual operational purpose is making sure that rich people pay as few taxes as possible by looking the other way when they don't obey the law.
Yet another insurmountable bug in capitalism - those with the capital make the rules, and usually the new rules allow them to accumulate further capital. Rinse and repeat.
A super simple fix is to encourage the rich to have more children. If they have 6 children and divide their wealth 6 ways, that rebalances wealth inequality every generation.
Easy enough to do via tax policy too. Eg. 10% tax reduction per child.
> A Practical Challenge: Paper Is Still the IRS’s Kryptonite
Please just give us the prompt.
I still file my tax returns on paper, via certified mail.
Why?
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> For COVID-19, a federal disaster declaration was in effect from January 20, 2020, through May 11, 2023. [...] As noted, tens of millions of taxpayers have been assessed penalties or interest for late filings or payments during these years.
I'm a little surprised that many people are late with their tax filings.
It’s not late filings as much as late payments (late quarterly estimated taxes, under-withholding beyond safe harbor rules, etc.)
Lots of people who are self-employed or who make a high W-2 income and receive irregular payments/gains (bonuses, RSU vests, capital gains) fall into this category.
Late filings are almost trivial to avoid; late payments are significantly harder to entirely avoid as, depending on your tax situation, many of the payments are due 12, 9, 6, or 3 months earlier than April 15.
I suppose. I've had years in the past where I had sporadic self-employment income, and I filed estimated payments only for the quarters where I had income, maybe even was late or combined a couple of quarters every now and then. I never got penalized as long as the amount I owed for the year had been paid by April 15. Maybe I was a small enough fish that they just didn't care.
Most likely you met one of the safe harbor tests.
The dunning for getting this wrong is automated, so if you didn’t do it right and didn’t pass a safe harbor, they’d have sent you a notice.
I have a vague recollection of being charged a penalty I didn't agree with and arguing with the IRS about it during the pandemic.
I couldn't tell you what or how much it was for now though.
Go pull your account transcript for the years in question.
This site is legit. It looks off because DOGE fired a lot of people last year and mandated the use of AI for public facing content like this so it's the equivalent of something a first week intern would draft before they got taught basic professionalism.
https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov
I can't tell if this is trying to seem fake.
Seriously. This reads like self-promotion of a bad YouTube channel or something. It's amateurish, full of self-aggrandizement and opinions. This has no place coming from our gov't.
FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Taxpayer_Advocat...
> An official website of the U.S. Gov
Looks as legit as the email I got from the official office of The Prince of Nigeria.
What seems fake about it?
Compare this site to the base domain.
https://www.irs.gov/
Do you think it looks official? Or does it look like someone spent $10 on a 3rd world rando to make a site on Wordpress and a spoofed URL and didn't even bother to make it part of the official site.
> Do you think it looks official?
I check the address bar for that.
You mean the thing that has been the source of many cybersecurity issues for years because fonts w/ ambiguous characters and varying levels of "how closely are you actually reading the URL"?
The very thing where sites like gmai1.com that look exactly like the real site phish creds?
Or things that even Google has issues with subdomains?
https://hoxhunt.com/blog/advanced-phishing-attack-using-goog...
The IRS site does use lots of subdomains like https://sa.www4.irs.gov, but even it looks like its using the same design language as the normal site.
> You mean the thing that has been the source of many cybersecurity issues for years because fonts w/ ambiguous characters and varying levels of "how closely are you actually reading the URL"? The very thing where sites like gmai1.com that look exactly like the real site phish creds?
Yes, that’s the one.
If I’m really paranoid, I’ll:
1.) avoid providing data to that page
2.) cross-reference host IP
3.) find the page on the original URL via search index
> The IRS should quickly develop a means to allow taxpayers to file their claims electronically and implement it immediately. The IRS and taxpayers do not need paper Forms 843 clogging up the system.
This is potentially the most usful AI slop blog post I've ever read.