When I’m watching television in the evening, I often see a commercial where the spokespeople are talking about how a particular company Tax Relief attorney helped them with their problems with the IRS – they managed to settle their IRS debt for a fraction of what they owed. Some of the amounts they claim they saved really astonishes me! I think to myself – gee it must be nice to be making so much money that you owed that much tax! And I wonder how it came to be that they owed that much money – why didn’t they have their withholding amounts properly claimed?
But then I started to remember that there are times when employment income really has nothing to do with how much money a taxpayer may owe to the IRS. Sometimes capital gains taxes apply. Sometimes inheritance taxes apply. Sometimes gift taxes apply.
I was recently reading an article about how sometimes a person’s social security number is stolen by an illegal alien and is used to land the illegal alien a job. The illegal alien doesn’t have income taxes withheld and then at filing time the “real” person is notified by the IRS that they are doing an audit because they think that the “legal” person made money and owes taxes when it was really the illegal alien that owes the taxes!
I kept on reading that this situation ended up in the “real” person changing their social security number. That got me to wondering how that would effect his/her social security benefits down the road – will he/she get the right credit for the work done prior to the identity theft when they try to collect Social Security when they retire?
Taxes can be a lot more complicated than people realize, and if the IRS comes knocking on your door, hiring a professional Tax Attorney would be a wise move.