Mom's SS has been garnished due to ID fraud. Now I just found out that she should have filed taxes the past 2 years and she did not. Advice?

The garnishment is tied to someone filing a claim using my mothers SS# and recieving a refund. They filed married filing joint. My dad has been gone since 1997. When I said that to the IRS person he said that he would release the garnishment right away. When he looked at my mothers account he saw the annuity check that I had cashed in 2013 and then told me to file. He indicated that since she has dementia and needs way more than room and board care that should offset any taxes that would be owed of any taxes. I will look into going to HR block also someone from church gave me the name of a person too.
I really hope that the IRS catches the people! I believe that it will come out that it was the people at the address on the 1099 that I saw but was not suppose to see. I don't think that this couple just happened to pay off their $19000 tax lean that was no longer posted against them just 3 months later when I check "court cases public records" in my state last fall! Thank you for your advice!

BLS - was the AARP visit done within the VITAS program? The vitas seems to be retry good as a lot are former enrolled agents but they are not supposed to do ant hung beyond the basic filings for the current year.

Your dealing with prior years, non-reporting of 1099 income for those years, all sorts of sch A items....really you are going to have to get a tax pro to get the priors done and this years. What I'd suggest is to contact one of the H&R Block year round offices ( the ones who are permanent & staffed daily) to get one them to do this and soon. A lot of these have retired enrolled agents. The one I use was a forensic accountant at a law firm before Block. Doing the past years now & before tax season enables them to take a bit more time. I bet they can go over all with you (& hubs) so that you all can do moms 2015 taxes next February on your own. What is nice abt these is that all the forms have a set price to do so the costs are reasonable & you can opt to get the " peace of mind" done so if there are any IRS letters afterwards they take care of it at no extra charge.

You kinda do need to take care of this as the IRS can garnish SS income if IRS determines there are taxes due. These are super sticky to deal with. I bet this is a concern of hubs & why he won't do it.

That was some really bad advice you got at the senior center! Even if you don't end up owing tax due to the deductions, you have file on income. If you can't do the taxes yourself on Turbotax, $150 is a bargain for the work. Its possible you may owe penalties on not filing at this point. Its kind of a deep enough hole right now that the least expensive way to get it done is probably not more advice. I shake my head to imagine the headache this has caused so far. Accountants cost a lot per hour. If your husband were willing and he does your taxes, he could use Turbotax for your Mom as well, and one try through the old returns wouldn't cost very much money. The deductions for the medical (those which qualify) are the only hard part.

all IRS sees is the amt of money you receive, you have to do a sch A to show the expenses! Take it to some one who knows what they are doing and pay for it. You probably wont have to pay anything but IRS can't see the expenses.

Whoever told you at the senior center was wrong. A person must file a tax return over a certain level of income. Did't your mother receive a 1099 from the place her annuity was cashed. The medical expense is a schedule A deduction and does not reduce income from the full expense. Even Social Security can be taxed, based on income total. You should utilized a tax accountant in your mother's case.

Another thought....the IRS has an OmBudsPerson hot line to help resolve issues and cut through the red tape. You might try that number just to confirm the deadline issues, and see if you can get extensions.

1-877-777-4778. More info at: http://www.irs.gov/Advocate/Local-Taxpayer-Advocate.

Whooo....this is a bit of a shock to learn that someone from AARP, or on its behalf was the adviser and that an IRS rep was on scene.

I'm just mentioning it although I wouldn't use it myself as I've done returns for years and e-mail IRS if I have questions, but I know that some people rely on Turbo-Tax. It's set up as a database, asking what apparently are standardized questions for supposedly every aspect of filing a 1040. So you're essentially prompted to answer specific questions as you prepare the form on a computer.

However, I don't know how much it would go into the specific issues that you have.

I hope you get some more responses to your question. One of the posters here used to work for the IRS, so she might have some good insight into the specific issue.

The place that I went was through the AARP and had IRS people there. My husband used to do her taxes back when she was competent but now he does not want to sign the bottom stating that he filled them out. The last time I went with mo to a tax preparer he charged $150 for the easy form. I am going to try to see if I can get advice somewhere. Thank you for responding.

BLS, you'll need to at least complete a 1040 form to see how much the $30.2K of expenses plus other items added in the Schedule A reduces the $43K of income, and figure out the net tax liability.

My advice would be to not go to the senior center for advice but get advice from someone skilled and qualified in preparing personal income tax returns.

AARP has volunteers who do this; I don't know how well they're trained though. I would also get these kinds of opinions in writing by e-mailing IRS rather than discussing the issue with someone, and having no documentation on IRS' position.

The calculations aren't straight forward; you can't take the entire amount of the medical costs, so the 1040 really needs to be filled out to determine what the liability is.

Are you not comfortable preparing your mother's taxes yourself?

I'm sorry to learn though that fraud was involved in one of the returns. Is the IRS investigating in an attempt to identify the fraudster? Was this for any of the returns that you discussed at the senior center? Have you also put either a fraud alert or security freeze on your mother's credit files with the 3 credit reporting agencies?

It wouldn't hurt to notify your mother's bank as well as her creditors, such as the ALZ care home, of the fraud.