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Comment by brk | Hacker News Reader

Seconded. Mine was a 6 figure mistake. I fact, it COST the IRS money to contact me. Once they sent info I realized the error, and that I did not in fact owe 6 figures. Paid it anyway so my wife wouldn't stress about penalities, restated ( took a year) and then received a refund with hefty interest paid by the IRS. Along the way their support line was helpful in getting some questions answered.

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At the risk of seeming flippant, but if you can afford to pay a six figure mistake just "so my wife wouldn't stress", then she probably really didn't have too much to stress about, financial burden of penalties or otherwise.

My wife has several degrees in finance, and that is her field. So I am lucky that our finances are somewhat more well managed than a lot of other folks. Her "home budget" spreadsheet spans more tabs than many small business' budgets.

With that in mind, we keep a certain amount of "operating expensed" liquid, since we both tend to work in smaller companies than can go sour rather fast. Paying out that check to the IRS sucked up the majority of those liquid funds. If you've read some of my posts in the past (not that I'd expect you to have done so...), you'd see that I'm on the upper end of the age scale here, have been around a while, and managed to enjoy a run through the dot-com 90's. So, I do not have the finances of a single 20-something college graduate.

I looked at this IRS payment as an investment. I was very highly confident that I would get my money back (and then some), so that was the easiest path, all things considered. Had I been more in doubt I would have certainly kept the money, reasoning that I'd rather have them pry it away from me if it came to that.

I didn't mean for my comment to sound like I just go around writing 6 figure checks as the path of least resistance.

That's like saying you shouldn't get stressed about receiving a parking ticket as long as you have the money to pay the ticket. Or you shouldn't get stressed if you get dinged with a penalty for not using an airline ticket or (pick your example). The truth is people do get stressed regardless of what their financial situation is. (Add: Logically they shouldn't but they do.)

More to the point the thing that causes stress is the fear of the unknown. The fear of "what if" where you don't know the outcome. One of the ways I have found to at least reduce a bit that stress is to come to the acceptance that the outcome even worse case scenario can be dealt with or how it will be dealt with which seems to work for me as a mind game.

Add: Also the parent's wife may have a different financial upbringing and might have a case of ptsd because of family history or other factors.

I don't know. Not paying what appears to be a 6-figure tax bill would be pretty stressful considering the amount of taxes the IRS would think you were evading.

thinly veiled brag.

No. Just data. I would have been more descriptive, but I was writing that reply on my phone.

If you think it's a brag, I apologize, I try to offer as much insight and perspective from my "learnings the hard way" as I can.

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