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Comment by leggomylibro | Hacker News Reader

That's what I thought, until the IRS needed a credit card last 4 digits and phone number to confirm my identity, and said that my phone company couldn't verify my identity...?

What an awful system. I probably wound up a day late with the postage because of that, but those assholes are lucky I filed at all. I was about ready to just throw my 1040 in the trash chute and give up my rebate as a lost cause. My time is worth more than this antiquated horseshit, and if I've learned anything from my grandpop it's that audits don't mean shit if you just keep ignoring them.

So, there's your procrastinator's attitude in a nutshell I guess.

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Call your 2 Senators and Representative. Call your state's Congress people. [0] Let them know you care about this. Advocate for systems like ReadyReturn, the one proposed by Professor Bankman. [1]

0. https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org/

1. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-l...

The IRS had huge problems with identity theft last year. They had to do something. Better to have those sorts of problems than to have them coming after you for a $20k payout to some scammer.

I don't care if a scammer scams the IRS out of $20K; that's their problem, not mine. If they think I'm responsible, well they can check my accounts; they're shit outta luck.

And their protective measures demonstrably did not work, anyways. Requiring a tenuous chain of several checks to all succeed is ridiculous; I have plenty of ways to verify my identity, FFS.

>they're shit outta luck.

This is why the new measures exist.

Right, but that's not helpful if I'm unable to efile because of their "new measures." Why not allow several forms of ID, like maybe a driver's license or passport? Why is a phone number the blocking step? Who designed this system?

That's how I feel whenever I am forced to interact with the IRS. Once, I went to one of their fully automated systems only to find that the entire website was only open between the hours of 9AM-5PM on weekdays! What?

I'm getting real tired of this shit. It's just unreasonable to expect me to jump through all of these hoops for something that they insist is so essential. If it's essential, then make it easy! If it's not easy, then don't make me do it!

Life is hard enough without the government ordering me to do busywork, and then failing to support the systems which they want me to use. Either it shouldn't be an order, or the system should work. Full stop. And I wouldn't be so upset if this horseshit bureaucracy and presumption of malfeasance wasn't starting to permeate every single aspect of modern life.

Damn, if your time is so valuable just hire an accountant for a few hundred bucks and let them file for you. That's what I do since I own a small consultancy. Total bill this year: $150. Time spent on taxes? < 1 hour.

Tax evasion and fraud affects us all, whether you want to admit it or not.

There have been efforts to change state/federal law so that tax agencies can send you a bill for what they think you owe, potentially saving you a lot of work. Unfortunately tax-prep companies have lobbied against it.

You must merely have your returns postmarked by the deadline. There's no impact by a failing e-filing system. Worst case, print them out, attach a check if needed and drop them in the mail.

> There's no impact by a failing e-filing system.

Unless you efile after the post office closes on the night of the 18th and/or don't own a printer and/or can't get there after efile fails but before the post office closes.

Or there are people like me, where my efile was rejected on April 19th. Now what do I do? If I try to efile again, it just says, "sorry, you're past the deadline". If I mail in a form it will technically be late, although I guess if they say anything I can show them my failed efile attempt...

Don't wait until the 18th? I always file my taxes in January. It's REALLY simple.

Also, being late isn't that bad. You'll likely get a notice in the mail detailing out any late charges. Which for being 1 day late will be extremely minor relative to your income.

That's great if your taxes are simple. Mine is not, and one of the critical forms didn't arrive in my email until April 16th, so I couldn't finish till then, and it affected other parts.

And yeah, I know being late isn't terrible, and in fact if you are owed a refund there is no penalty at all. But it's still annoying that it was late because critical government run infrastructure was broken.

There is a "perfection" period when things go wrong in e-filing. Granted, you shouldn't have waited until the last moment to file. That being said, you could have called 1-800-829-1040 for guidance on how to fix the problem through either fixing your e-filing or mailing it in with appropriate headings to still be counted on-time.

The main line was slow on the 18th and people had very little wait time. The 19th was much the same. There were an excess of operators who were waiting for calls on the non-specialty line.

Go read Publication 17 for guidance for next year.

You can ignore audits?

Sure. If you aren't self-employed, your employer already pays your taxes and you're likely owed money by the IRS. It's your choice if you don't want to collect it.

If you're self-employed and not reporting income...well, that's another story. But this is terrible advice that you should definitely ignore, anyways.

I didn't ask if you can avoid filing taxes or collecting the money you're owed; I asked if you can ignore audits, since the claim was the latter.

Right, and it really depends on how serious they are. If they think you owe a lot of money, then no, you cannot ignore them. If they think you're just an asshole who can't be arsed to deal with them or is not capable of doing so, they really aren't going to do anything.

Like I said, my grandfather owns a business and hasn't filed in decades. It caused my Uncle some serious consternation when he took the reigns, but he never faced any consequences in the form of being held in contempt, asset seizure, etc. Just some nastygrams every now and again.

But again, this is awful advice; I was mostly being facetious. You should not just outright ignore your taxes, you should at least make a desultory effort to get SOMETHING in. But damned if I'm going to bother pulling together any more forms than are in arms/web's reach, or mail in anything more than the bare minimum.

To more specially answer your question, legally you don't have to show up to an audit. The audit is supposedly in your best interest, because it will stop the clock on racking up penalties and interest, assuming you pay them afterwards.

If you just keep ignoring it, eventually you will die and your estate won't be released to your heirs until the tax man gives it a final audit, and your estate will have to pay penalties and interest back to when you failed to pay.

If you're poor and/or broke, then sure, ignore an audit, because they can't get blood from a stone. :)

It is possible to do so, I suppose, but the results are normally catastrophic financially. You can have levies placed on you if you end up owing $5,000 or more. You can have liens placed on your property if you owe $10,000 or more. You can have your passport revoked nowadays if you owe $50,000 or more.

Avoid the catastrophe.

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