 My name is Simon Tran and I'm ProPublica's offense associates. Welcome to what Ohio needs to know about taxes in 2021. Tonight's event is sponsored by McKinsey and Company and co-presented by ProPublica and Code for America. For those new to us, ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. We're currently growing our coverage of the Midwest, so it's great to have this conversation about Ohio tonight as well as folks outside of Ohio. Thanks for joining us. Code for America is a civic tech organization that uses technology to design equitable government services, and they operate GetYourRefund.org, a national coalition that provides free tax filing assistance to low income families. Today, we'll talk about both our country's broader tax system and the tax filing process. To help guide us through this, we were joined by David Neubull, Senior Program Director of Tax Benefits at Code for America, where he oversees GetYourRefund.org, which I described earlier. David previously served as Vice President of Policy and Research at ProsperityNow, a nonprofit focused on building financial security for working families, as well as a senior policy advisor at the US Department of the Treasury. We also have Rachel Squared, who is the Tax Time Program Manager at United Way of Central Ohio in Columbus. Tax Time is a coalition of organizations collaborating to provide free high-quality tax preparation services and financial resources referrals to central Ohio residents. Rachel's VITA team serves as the lead for Ohio's GetYourRefund.org for the coalition. Finally, we have Elizabeth Moreskat, a clinical professor of law at Fordham University School of Law and the supervising attorney of the school's tax clinic. She specializes in federal tax controversy and litigation against the IRS and has advised clients, attorneys, and policymakers on tax issues which arise in consumer matters. Thank you to our panel for joining us tonight. One note for our audience. This session is not designed to give advice about your personal tax or financial situation. Rather, it's intended to provide resources and information to clarify the often confusing steps and requirements in the tax filing system. Also, this session is being recorded and a link to the video will be emailed to everyone who registered. To kick things off tonight, we will first hear from ProPublica reporters who reported extensively on the tax prep industry and the IRS. To provide context around the systemic issues that can make taxes so complicated, we have a brief video that summarizes their findings across four key areas. It's about 10 minutes long. Awesome. Hi, I'm Justin Elliott. I'm Paul Keel. I'm Lydia DePellis. We're investigative reporters at ProPublica covering business, economics, and politics. We're here today to talk to you about tax filing services, the IRS, and what you can expect during this year's tax filing season. We'll talk about a reporting from the past several years on these issues, as well as information you need to know for this year. The modern history of how we do tax prep in the United States really begins about two decades ago, late 90s, early 2000s, around the turn of the millennium, and that was a period in which more and more Americans were getting personal computers, people were getting onto the internet, and everyone at the time filed their taxes using paper forms. But there were people inside the government who were thinking a lot about the potential of the internet, and there was a proposal actually during the early years of the George W. Bush administration to get the IRS to create a new online electronic tax filing system. The idea was this is going to be a free option that any taxpayer could use made by the government in alternative to sending in the paper forms that everyone had been doing for so many years. Into it, the Silicon Valley company that makes TurboTax, at that time already had a very lucrative business selling TurboTax software. And immediately when the Bush administration put forth this proposal to have the IRS create a government free tax filing system into it. And the rest of the tax prep industry saw this as a potentially existential threat to their growing tax prep business. The companies embarked upon a very aggressive lobbying campaign that was ultimately successful in beating back this free IRS tax filing proposal. The way that they killed the proposal was they basically made a deal with the government. This was sort of an early public private partnership in technology. And it's called the free file deal. And the basic deal going back to the early 2000s was the tax prep industry led by into it. Promise the government that they would offer a free version of their software to most Americans. And in exchange, the IRS had to promise never to create its own public tax filing option. This free file option, as it's called, was available to most Americans. But the story of the 20 years since this deal was made is a story of the tax prep industry led by into it, taking steps to make sure as few Americans actually use this this truly free option as possible. So that's the history of sort of how we got to where we are today. The situation that Americans find themselves in today when it comes to tax prep is if you go onto Google and type in found my taxes or found my taxes for free, you will be abarded by advertisements from into it for their product TurboTax from H&R Block from a whole host of other companies offering what are advertised as quote unquote free tax filing options. The fundamental trick that the industry has been playing on American tax filers for many years now is that there are two different version free versions of the software and one is actually free and the other often leads you to pay a fee. So the truly free option is called IRS free file. It's a dot gov website. But on the other hand, there's a whole host of commercial products. The biggest one is called TurboTax free, which are actually very different than IRS free file. If you are one of the people who ends up clicking on a link for TurboTax free or H&R Block free. Essentially, what happens is depending on your specific tax filing situation, if you have certain types of tax forms, certain types of income, for example, if you're, let's say an Uber driver and you have 1099s that you get as part of your Uber income, suddenly if you are in TurboTax free version, after you've put in a lot of your information, you've been spending a lot of time with the software, TurboTax will suddenly tell you actually to file this form, you have to upgrade to TurboTax Deluxe, which might cost $100 or maybe you have to upgrade to an even more expensive version of the software. And what we showed in our reporting was that there's literally millions of Americans every year who are getting caught by this fundamental trick where they're clicking on an ad or product that's labeled as free, but then they get three quarters of the way through the process and suddenly they realize they have to pay to finish. Even though these same people, if they had just found the right IRS site, the free file site would have been able to file actually for free using basically the same software. There was a inspector general report that looked at this issue after our reporting a couple of years ago and an inspector general found that 14 million Americans in 2019 at least had paid for tax prep that they could have gotten for free through the free file program. So if you're looking for the truly free tax prep option, try to find the IRS free file version. It's that you should start on a dot-gov site. So a lot of our reporting for the last couple of years in the IRS is focused on the fact that the IRS has been starved of resources for the last 10 years really. And it's not like it was drowning in resources before that started. So what that means for people is that basic things like if you would try to contact the IRS, a lot of times it's hard to even get through to talk to someone. Any correspondence of the mail is gonna take months on end to resolve. And what we found is that a lot of the cuts that happened as a result of basically budget cuts to the agency, they have lost a lot of personnel. And it's been a different story how people have been affected depending on how much income they have. So people at the top of the income ladder have really benefited from this because if the IRS is short staffed, what that means is a lot fewer audits are gonna get done. Particularly people who are upper income because those types of audits are really resources intensive and take a really skilled agent to do them. Whereas people lower down the income scale often are really audited by computers. So a computer might challenge someone's claim of a child on their tax return or ask them to prove up the fact that they said they made this much money freelancing or something like that. And so you get a letter in the mail and it can be pretty intimidating to deal with. And then you have to deal also with the fact that the IRS is short staffed and it's hard to get answers for anything. We found there's a real imbalance in the cuts to the agencies who's been impacted by that. So as Paul and Justin have probably already told you after a decade of declining funding and staffing, the IRS was asked to do something in 2020 that was unprecedented probably in its history, which was during a pandemic, get stimulus checks out to 160 million Americans, essentially overnight. And what the pandemic meant for the IRS was like many federal agencies, they had to shift to remote work as quickly as possible. And that meant shutting down many of their processing centers. But the way that the IRS still works, much of it is still on paper. And so you had mail coming into these processing centers, piling up and tractor trailers because nobody could get there to deal with it. And remember, the pandemic came in the middle of 2019 tax filing season. So if you filed a tax return by mail, you may not have heard back even yet. And that causes a lot of trouble for people who normally depend on getting their dependable refunds back in a relatively prompt fashion and then later on it became important for stimulus checks. So, but let me go back to the summer and fall of 2020 when the IRS was trying to get stimulus checks to the people who really needed them the most. And often those were folks either without bank accounts or who hadn't ever filed taxes at least recently. And those people all had to be asked to file a special form and reaching all of them was really difficult. So asking the IRS to cope with all of these changing protocols with less money, less staff, less processing centers open and no extra money to do all this outreach that they were being asked to do meant that inevitably there was gonna end up being a cascade of problems that continue into 2021. Now they're being asked to do a second and third round of stimulus checks which are getting progressively easier because they now know how to get the money out and how to find people. The IRS did get another one and a half billion dollars in the most recent stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan in order to try to modernize their systems and boost their staffing. But it's a paltry way to make up for 10 years of declining funding. And it doesn't look like the problems we're gonna get much better just with that on an ongoing basis. You need to start over the, oh, now we have permission. Thank you. Welcome everyone back. So that was a lot of information, a lot of things that we covered and it kind of ended on a bummer note but there are resources and information to help navigate all of this. For one, ProPublica has published a free tax guide full of free fact-checked tax information and I'll make sure to drop the link in the chat box for everyone to have. But we also have this panel for everyone to share information more about these issues, right? And by the way, if you have a question for the panelists at any time, feel free to type it in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and we've also received some questions. So first things first, at ProPublica we found that a lot of people who don't know where to turn when they have questions about their taxes in addition to the IRS free file system that the video discussed, what are some free tax options that you've had experience with? And David, we'll start with you. Absolutely, thanks Simon. And on behalf of Code for America it's great to partner with you. You all at ProPublica today and to get this information out to folks. As we saw in the videos, taxes can be perplexing and complicated and stress-inducing in general. This year it's even more so given everything going on with the pandemic and all the new benefits that are kind of being thrown out in the middle of the tax season. But the good news is there are a lot of valuable free resources and trustworthy resources that folks can access in the pandemic even though the IRS itself has limited resources. One of the best ones to go to is the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program. It's the VITA program. It's a public private partnership that's overseen by the IRS but it's actually administered by local programs throughout the country. So it's a great way to get your profits usually in partnerships. To help folks, typically if you have income below $57,000 a year you can access VITA services normally. The model would be you'd be able to do it in person. And there are some places where you can, limited places where you can access VITA in person. I'm not sure specifically about Ohio but Rachel might be able to elaborate on that later. But given the pandemic and the need to socially distance dot org, which came about from Code for America allows folks to virtually access VITA services in partnership with VITA sites and VITA volunteers to get their taxes done obviously at a safe distance. There's a couple of different models. You can go to the website and learn more about it and access it if you're eligible. Through Get Your Refund it's eligible to folks that have incomes $66,000 and below to are able to access those services. You can go there and you can both find a tool that can help you locate a local VITA site near you in person or you can go on and use the virtual service. And there's a variety of different models if you're not fully comfortable going fully digital. You know, there's a valet model where you can kind of drop off your paperwork at a VITA site and a volunteer will prepare it remotely and get back to you to finish your return. And you know, there are some hybrids where you can come in and do your own taxes on a laptop or an iPad and have someone socially distance who can help you if you have questions or you have some support there to prepare it. So there's different services and there's also phone services I should mention as well depending on folks comfort level. So a variety of different options. The other one I would say for those of you who are more comfortable doing taxes by yourself and wanna access a free site that isn't, you know, involved with the free file program necessarily MyFreeTaxes.com is another great resource from the United Way for folks, you know if you wanna be able to go in there and there is some assistance that you can receive so mostly you'd be doing it on your own and kind of using free software. That's another great free option. And then the last option I would just mention for the more brave of you or those of you who are over the income limit and looking for a free option is, you know unlike free file, there's also free fillable forms which can also be found on the IRS website. It's a little confusing but the warning is it's literally just the paper forms and electronic forms. So you have to go and do all the calculations yourself and submit it and you can e-file the federal return in some cases the state returns but again, it's all on you. There's no income limit. So it's pretty bare bones. And if you're looking for assistance and you meet the income qualifications, you know going to a Vita site is the best place. And like I said, you can go to the IRS website to find a Vita site or getyourrefund.org can kind of guide you through that process and offer up a lot of these different options. No, thank you David so much for that. Rachel, I saw you nodding a few times. You know, we had mentioned with the pandemic, right? We saw widespread job losses and a spike of people filing for unemployment. So what are ways that unemployment insurance will affect people's taxes? For example, you know, do you pay taxes on it? What should people expect? So Rachel, I'd love to hear from you. Yeah, that's a really great question. I just want to like really quickly revisit some more free file resources. So if you're in Ohio, number one you should always be able to call 2-1-1 within Ohio. So your 2-1-1 will know sort of where local resources are. We are partnering with Code for America. So if you go to getyourrefund.org you'll be connected to a local Ohio tax preparer. So that's great. But if your income is outside of our range you can contact the AARP tax aid. At this point they might be completely full but they're full service certified through the same processes that VITA programs are and they're contrary to popular belief you do not have to be over a certain age to use AARP free tax services. So I wanted to recommend them really quickly because they're fantastic. But in terms of unemployment, yes that is a huge issue right now especially with the recent legislation that was passed. So we know that there's been a lot of struggling you know a lot of suffering over the last year. And so we just wanna make sure that people take advantage of all of the assistance that's out there all of the legislation that's been passed to assist them in this tough time. And one of those kind of factors that will help you on your tax return if you have unemployment related income from last year from 2020 is that the first $10,200 of that is actually untaxable. And now this was just recently and that's at the federal level this was just recently sort of passed in the new legislation. And so if you already filed you might be asking yourself do I need to amend my tax return? The answer is no, you don't need to amend at least your federal return. Now states are kind of coming out with guidance on this still. So for Ohio stay tuned. There's the intention to kind of make that 10,200 also untaxable within Ohio but the legislation hasn't been finalized the signature hasn't been put on the dotted line yet. So we've been holding off on filing returns we've been preparing them for the last I think it's been like a week and a half two weeks now that we've been waiting we've been preparing but not filing. So I would recommend that you do the same and also just kind of keep in tune with what's going on by following different public officials on social media just doing some Googling each day or if you find tax time centralohio.org on Facebook or Twitter or sorry not.org tax time of central Ohio on Twitter or Facebook then you can kind of follow us and see we'll definitely post if there are any changes. I would also say some people aren't sure if they received unemployment income if you received money from Franklin County Job and Family Services that is unemployment income if you received a 1099G that could be your unemployment income or it could be fraud. So if you received a 1099G in the mail but you didn't collect unemployment you'll want to report that fraud to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and also kind of do all of the things that you would do if your identity was stolen otherwise. And if you have questions about that you could probably get help from a local Vita program. Now, thank you, Rachel. What about people who took on gig work to replace lost income during COVID like driving for Uber or something? How does that affect how their income is classified for their taxes? No is the best, let's go to you. Okay, so if you had a job like an Uber driver or a Lyft or a DoorDash or something else where you didn't receive a W-2 or you received a 1099 you're considered to be self-employed because you weren't treated as employee by the person you worked for. So you're considered to be self-employed and that adds some additional tax responsibilities. And the first one is to know when you file you have to file something called the Schedule C which is basically a self-employed sort of miniature tax return. And you can, you have to report your gross income and then you're allowed to take certain deductions that you wouldn't be allowed to take if you were an employee. So one of the real tricks here is with Uber and DoorDash and Lyft, it can be very confusing to just know how much you actually earn from them because you're gonna get several different kinds of tax forms and you want to always make sure you're looking at your final sort of year-end statement or your monthly statements that say how much they actually paid you, how much Uber gave you to put in your bank account. And then when you go to get your returns filed you'll have an idea of how much Uber got paid compared to how much you got paid and anything that went to Uber you don't have to pay taxes on, you only have to pay on what you got yourself. So you would deduct that. And then the next thing to know is for those of you who haven't been fastidious about keeping your records, one of the things, ways you can deal with that is you're allowed to take these deductions, you're allowed to take a mileage deduction for your car. So when there is something called actual deductions where you would figure out how much gas you spend maybe if you got a break job or maybe if you needed new tires. But one way to compensate for all that kind of receipt keeping and information is to just take a mileage deduction and you can determine how many miles you drove for that income and then take this mileage deduction. So again, you need to file this separate return, not a separate return, it's part of your return of the schedule C and then you're gonna also own self, you're gonna owe self-employment income and income taxes. So you might actually find out that the taxes take a little bit bigger bite out of your income than if you were employed. Thank you, Elizabeth. Next question is knowing your income is the first step to understanding how much one will be taxed. And so, Rachel, can you walk us through how tax brackets actually work? Yeah, that's a great question. And actually one that like I don't deal with on a day-to-day basis because we kind of like prepare the return in the computer and then it kind of does everything and we have to just know the policy but it is good to know how they work. So basically you kind of to determine your tax bracket which is tax brackets are like ranges of income and based on what range your income falls within you, your tax rate changes. So to determine your tax bracket you basically sort of add up all of your income and then you have to determine what part of that is taxable. So you reduce the overall income by deductions and by adjustments. And then that will be sort of your taxable what's called your taxable income. And then you can look at the chart like online and see where you fall. So they range from 10%. I'm having to look at like a chart I have to 37%. And sort of people might think that, okay, if my income is the first one for 10% is zero to about 20,000. If my income is in the next one, the 20,000 to 80,000 that's for married filing jointly, then okay, I'm gonna pay that second rate that higher rate for that second group. But in reality you're paying 10% on the first 20,000 and then the 12% on the next amount between like the next two levels. So you're sort of paying on like the margin essentially of your income. It's not that important for you to know that like all the time because the software will do it for you. But if you're curious, you can go in and kind of figure it out on paper. Another thing that people ask kind of in the same vein is whether you should itemize or take the standard deduction. And that really depends on, does your income, does your income or sorry, do your expenses actually exceed what that standard deduction is? So the standard deduction is sort of like, you know, an amount of money that you can reduce your income by and you can either take that kind of standard one or you can list all of your expenses and reduce your taxable income by like all of those added up expenses. So these are things that, you know, you should talk with your tax preparer about and do a little bit of research on your own. Also, if you volunteer with VITA, you can learn much more. Thank you, Rachel. What is the earned income tax credit? We've heard about this a few times. Who qualifies for it and what are the new rules for this year? David. Yeah, thanks, Simon. Yeah, the earned income tax credit is one of the most impactful tax credits out there for low and moderate income workers. You know, it's a fantastic program. It's been around or credit. It's been around since the 70s and it's been expanded greatly over that time. But essentially, you know, it kind of phases in slowly and rewards folks for work. And then it kind of ramps up and then slowly phases out as you get to a more moderate income level. It can be quite sizable, particularly, you know, if you're claiming dependents or children, it can get quite large, it can get up to around $6,600, which is a massive refund. If you've ever noticed you've had a big refund in the past and you kind of fall in that bracket around with earned income, you probably have benefited from the earned income tax credit and not realized it. And one of the downsides, unfortunately, with the earned income tax credit, it's incredibly complex. And it's led to a lot of issues with folks who are eligible for it who don't claim it or folks who do claim it, you know, and whether they are doing their taxes themselves or they're going to a tax preparer, it's done incorrectly. And they end up in a situation where there's something called overpayments where basically the credit is claimed improperly and there needs to be a correction. So this is another one where if you think it might be eligible for the earned income tax credit, I definitely encourage folks to go to a volunteer income tax assistant site to have someone, an expert, kind of guide you through that. The other thing I should plug is, you know, that we haven't mentioned yet, again, is that VITA sites nationwide overall have the highest accuracy rates of any tax preparation firms, higher than like the commercial providers. It's up in the 90s typically. So it's one of the best sources you can go to to get your taxes done accurately and kind of help you navigate things like the earned income tax credit. Because like I said, it's a lot of money on the table. You know, there's like billions of dollars that are left unclaimed every year and it's estimated that about one out of every five households that's eligible doesn't claim it. Typically, you know, a lot of those households that don't claim it tend to be single workers or those who are non-custodial parents. So they get a smaller EITC and it's usually around $500 or can be around $500 spending on your situation. But the new tax law that you mentioned, Simon, which will go into effect for the EITC for the next tax season when we had January for the 2021 tax year, the 2022 calendar year, actually gives that a huge boost. It kind of almost triples it. It pushes it up to over $1,500. So now is a better time than ever. Obviously not only for the earned income tax credit for, but if you haven't claimed one or all of the three EIPs, it's a large amount of money on the table and it really is, you know, in everyone's interest to claim. And then the other factor too, I think we can talk about later is the child tax credit. That was expanded as well for the next tax season, but it'll be available earlier. So it's all the more reason for folks, if you haven't filed a 2020 tax return, now is the time to do it and to take advantage of all these different pieces. And I think VITA is an excellent resource to make sure you're getting everything that you're entitled to and you get the biggest refund possible. No, thank you so much, David, for that. I know we'll have some more questions kind of related to that later. For, you know, what if someone's having trouble with the IRS? They can't get something started or they're getting audited. What resources can people access for a problem like this? Elizabeth, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Okay, so the first thing I wanna tell you about if you get a letter from the IRS or the state of Ohio Taxation Department, do not ignore it. That's the worst thing that you can do. So don't ignore a letter if it comes to you. The second thing I can tell you is the IRS doesn't call you in the middle of the day and say, if you don't pay us, you're about to be arrested. They generally will contact you by mail. They don't email you, they don't call you. The first contact's always gonna be a letter. In that letter will be a phone call you can call, a phone number you can call if you have questions. Every letter's gonna come with some kind of deadline. And generally you should be able to read the letter and understand it. And if you're in a situation where you read the letter, you understand it and you don't know what to do or you read the letter, you don't understand it and you don't know what to do, there are like VITA, there's these organizations called Low Income Taxpayer Clinics that are also funded partially by the IRS where they represent people who are in some kind of situation with the IRS that they can't resolve on their own like an audit or a collection matter or something like that. And the great thing about those clinics is that even if they can't represent you, they will have a lot of information for you and they can give you advice about how you can help yourself. And I'm gonna put the list for Ohio in the chat when I'm done. So basically there is help out there. The other thing you can do if your VITA site is still open and you've been to VITA, you can go back to VITA. I know a lot of times the IRS audit cycle does not have anything to do with tax season. So you may get a letter in September or the summer where the VITA site is closed. And again, don't ignore it, do read it, try to figure it out. If you can respond, don't send original city IRS ever. If you respond, you should respond by mail. You can also respond by fax sometimes and they'll give you a fax number but just be careful to keep proof of mailing that you responded so you certified mail or proof that you did send in the fax. And again, you will hear back from the IRS. In normal times, the IRS is a very slow moving machine. It's a very big machine, but it moves very slowly. And the timetables that you think are normal are not timetables the IRS works on. So it does take them an awful long time to get back to you. And if a ton of time goes by more than three or four months and you haven't heard then you can also call your local taxpayer advocate and they can help you get things moving in the IRS system. Thank you, Elizabeth. That kind of goes to our last question before we go to audience Q and A. We're talking about the IRS in the backlog of kind of the timetables as you had mentioned with the paperwork of processing stimulus checks and the pandemic, but also in a decade of decline funding. Are you seeing delays in tax returns? I know some folks have been in the Q and A they've been asking about delays in their tax returns and also their stimulus checks. And so what timeframe should people expect? Rachel, I'd love to hear from you. That's a great question. And others can definitely feel free to weigh in, but from what I've been reading and seeing, if you're electronically filing and you are opting into direct deposit, I think we're still seeing a one to three week wait time on those refunds being deposited. But when you get to filing on paper and asking for a paper check, that's when things are taking much, much longer this year than they would normally take. So we're seeing if you're paper filing and requesting a check in the mail up to around two months waiting for those refunds. So I would definitely recommend electronically filing unless you absolutely have no option, other than filing on paper. And if you don't have a bank account, it's a good opportunity to open one. I don't know if others are seeing longer waits on those e-file, the direct deposit for e-files, but I haven't heard more complaints this year than I normally do. So that's a good thing. But the paper files, I know they have a huge backlog of paper documents. So who knows? I mean, two months could be a low estimate. Awesome, thank you. Did anyone else wanna add to that? I think the only thing I would say too is for the folks who've already filed there, and this came up in the past, but folks who filed their 2020 tax returns, if you're claiming the recovery rebate, and for some reason, you either got one of the EIPs or you didn't get another. We've heard or we've seen it anecdotally, we've kind of seen that that slows down the process as well, because I think the IRS is trying to reconcile that in the back end. And sometimes you can get stuck. If there's some type of adjustment or your return gets flagged, it can kind of put you in this limbo and it can again, it could take two months. It could take longer potentially because the IRS does operate on its own timeframe. And as we heard in the video, they're suffering under a lot of constraints. So things are a lot slower this year. Well, thank you. So a moment to the audience Q&A question, Q&A. I see some folks have been submitting some of their questions, which is great. And we will, so if you want to ask a question, click the Q&A icon above the screen and type it and we'll be able to answer it. So one of the questions that people are having just in general is, you know, stimulus checks. I think that there's still maybe some questions about what income is it based off of. So can we, what income 2019 or 2020 are the stimulus checks based off of? So you might have to weigh in others, but I believe that for the first payment, it was based on whatever they had as the newest information at that time. And so if you hadn't yet filed, yeah, you wouldn't have filed. So the first one was based on the 2019 and then the second one was, I believe, based on what you had filed most recently. So if you had already filed the 2020, then you would have gotten that, but most people hadn't. So it would have been based, sorry, maybe someone else should fill on this. I'm a little bit tongue tied on exactly the timeline. I don't know if anyone could explain it more clearly. Yeah, I think that's the roughly right. Cause it is very confusing cause there were three rounds and they came at different times. My understanding is that the first EIP, the original one from the CARES Act back in 2020, that one could have been based off your 2018 tax year forms as well. And then going forward, it's 2019 or 2020. Now, if you didn't file a 2020 form like recently, like before this third round went out, they'll use your 2019 income to base it off of. If you did file a 2020, Rachel, like you said, they'll use the most recent one. And to answer another question, it often comes up, if your 2019 income was lower, if there's a drastic difference between, you won't have to pay it back if you're 2020, if it's more advantageous to use your 2019 data, but you can't go back and say, I want to use file your 2024 and say, I want to use my 2019 data, I can get very confusing. So basically, they'll use the most recent data that they have available to get that to you. And let me just also add, if you didn't get the first two checks, when you file for 2020, you can tell the IRS, I didn't get either payment. And if you're entitled, it will be refunded to you when you file that return. Or if you got the wrong amount, and then you can correct that. So like what David was saying earlier about, oh, it's like slipping my mind of, oh, right, about if you have for delays, right? So if you put the incorrect amount, like if you don't know what you received in stimulus money and economic impact payment, and you guess and you try to estimate like what you received and you put the wrong amount on there, they're gonna fix it, but they're going to take their speed time trying to fix it. So you won't get into any kind of trouble, but it may delay your refund if you put the wrong number on there. Yeah, and the only other thing I would add that this is all spot on, the only other thing I would add is it gets really confusing. People also ask about the dependence and all that. And that, and also for families, mixed status immigration families too, there's some confusion around that. There were some changes that originally were left out of the first payment, then retroactively included. If there's someone with an ITIN in a household and some folks have a social security number, originally they couldn't access it. Now, the folks with the social security number can't access it. So there's some confusion there. And then a lot of people were saying like 17 and older, if you have kids, for some reason, they were not included in the first two rounds, but the third round, kids older than 16 can be included, adult dependence can be included, so it's more expensive. So there's things like that too. And it's all the more reason, again, I'll be a broken record to go to a Vita site to get a volunteer who's been well-trained and make sure that you're claiming all this correctly and not missing out on anything, given all the confusion, especially this year. For sure, thank you. Yeah, and that kind of adds to one of the next questions of just what if their family did change with if they had just a kid in the last month, how will they benefit from the 2021 child tax credit? I'm sure that there's some questions about that. If you just had a kid versus if you qualify for the payments this year, people are unsure about the little bit. Yeah, that's another confusing one. And it's a common scenario because life goes on and people have babies and families change. Yeah, the good news is, the way that Congress wrote the third EIP is that you could, if you have a child between now and the end of the year, 2021, you can still claim the most recent EIP for that child, the $1,400 or if you meet the income limits for that. So you would just have to, again, like with the recovery rebate credit, you would have to claim it next year on the tax form to be able to access it if it happens later in the year. I was gonna add that there's been talk of a portal. It's not yet, I don't know exactly what it would be released by the IRS where you can, if you've had changes in 2021, since the child tax credit actually can start being issued to you throughout the year instead of, as a refund that you might, you will be able to log on to an IRS portal and make those updates. So TBD on when and how and all of that. But yes, if you don't end up getting it through that mechanism, you will be able to get it when you file, of course. Thank you. Some of that money that the IRS got that they talked about in the video is gonna actually go to help them with their, you know, their infrastructure, their computer infrastructure, because obviously these are a lot of big changes for them, they can't, I'm no friend or a lover of the IRS, but they really have worked really hard to make all these changes happen very quickly and try to get this money out to people very, very fast. So we're all hopeful that the portal does get up and running and it works. Thank you. I wanna kind of go back into filing taxes just a little bit, you know, folks, one of the questions we got was, what if we didn't file last year? Love, you know, to any one of you to share what you think, but also we had a question from folks watching right now, what if you have been working in a different industry, for instance, and haven't filed for years, and now what is the, you know, should they file for taxes for their taxes for the first time? That's just in terms of like, you know, if you haven't had, you know, filed recently, like what should you like or... I don't know who wants to take this. So if you are supposed to file and you haven't filed, you should file. You should file even if you find out you're gonna owe taxes and you can't afford to pay, it's always better to file that return because you never want the IRS to come with one of those audit letters and say, oh, you know, you didn't file and here's how much tax you owe. The other thing about not filing is the IRS doesn't know where you are maybe, maybe you moved and they still think you live at the address where you last filed in, I don't know, 2015, and you're not even gonna get that audit letter. The next thing you're gonna get might be like that levy on your bank account. So it's always good to stay current with filing. If you owe taxes and you can't afford to pay, the IRS has mechanisms in place where they can freeze, you know, freeze that debt, freeze the collection on the debt, the debt's still there and the interest still grows, but if you can't afford to pay, they will put you in something called non-collectible status and therefore you won't have to pay. And if you can't pay even if it's a little bit, you can go on the IRS website and set up an online payment plan and sometimes it can be for a small amount every month. Sometimes I'll let you pay a small amount for a year or two and then, you know, if things get better and you financially are in a better place, you can increase those payments. So there's a lot of options. The IRS also has a 800 number to call if you owe taxes. The problem is, again, that that line can get very busy and sometimes you'll be on hold for a long time and sometimes you'll be on hold and then they'll just throw you off the line and hang up because there's no space for you. So if you do have to call the IRS, especially collection and those numbers will be in the bills that you get, try to do it first thing in the morning when the lines open up. Yeah, and the only thing I would add too is, you know, normally if you're below a certain income, it doesn't make sense to file typically, but given everything that's happened with the EIPs, you know, and obviously, you know, if you have children dependence too, especially with this upcoming child tax credit benefit, it just makes sense to file, you know, because you may be EITC eligible too, even if you have a pretty low income and not have much income. And you can file for three years worth of back taxes, you know, if you go to your right-of-sight. So that could add up to a significant amount of money when you add it all up. So, and again, it makes sense to be in the system so you don't miss out on these letters or the payments that might be going to who knows where depending on the last time you had an interaction with the IRS or they had a form for you. So it just makes, we're encouraging everybody to just file for 2020 for sure to make sure that they're not missing out on any of these benefits. I always also tell people to file to protect against identity theft, just one more thing, because if your return gets rejected, you know that someone used your social security number. You can file a zero return also, even if you don't have income. And again, like this new child tax credit that's going to be beginning, I believe, David, it's July, right, of 2021, you really want to get a return filed. And someone noticed that the portal will be ready until July in the chat. And I just want to say like the IRS has got to get tax season over. And I think that what they're probably thinking realistically, we need tax season to be over before we can focus on getting these monthly payments out to families. We have a few minutes left. Thank you. One of the questions that we got was, if you do not have a business, what items are still deductible? So home, business, medical, et cetera. And for folks who are, the freelancers, what, on the opposite side, what are kind of the things that are deductible? You want to go ahead, Rachel? Are you, I'm not until we're ready for this. So when you're employed and you're an employee, there's a lot, very few deductions you can take. The main deductions that you can take are your home mortgage interest and property taxes or state income taxes. You're also allowed to deduct medical expenses, but only when you have a lot of medical expenses, like they exceed 10% of your income. And those are all the itemized deductions, Rachel, we're talking about. So if those don't add up to more than your standard deduction, it doesn't even matter because you're not gonna bother taking a lower deduction than the standard deduction. There used to be these other itemized deductions you're allowed to take, and they've all basically been disallowed under the new tax law that was passed in 2017. There are small things you can take. Everyone can take up to $300 of a charitable deduction. If you're a teacher, you're allowed to take a small amount that you spend for your classroom items. If you're self-employed, the game sort of changes and there's all this stuff that you're allowed to take. And basically, if you're self-employed and you're filing that schedule C, you're allowed to deduct any amount of money that you spend to create the income. So that mileage that you're driving your car, maybe you had to take a license. Maybe you got your commercial driver's license this year and you had to take a test or you had to take a class, that would be deductible. So anything that helps you generate the income is deductible if you're self-employed. And honestly, I know we talked about good resources for filing taxes. And if you're not eligible for VITA, I do think those commercial softwares, if you just go out and buy them sort of off the shelf, like at Target or Walmart, they're relatively inexpensive and they take you through a series of questions. And those questions will help get to, if you answer them correctly, you should be able to get to the right place for filing if you're self-employed, because it's a little bit harder. And I think VITA has some restrictions also when you're self-employed. I was gonna add in Ohio, if your medical expenses are more than 7.5% of your income, you can actually deduct those on your state return. Going back to unemployment, what if what happens if someone gets unemployment from a state that they don't currently live in? So if you earn income in any state, you have to file a state tax return, generally in that state. And sometimes you'll be due a refund. So if I live in New York, but if I worked in New Jersey, I would have to file a New York state return because that's where I live and in New Jersey return because that's where I worked. Unemployment often comes without taxes being deducted. So you may owe taxes, especially if it's over that threshold of the 10,000, I think it's $10,200 that's exempt. And it might not be exempt in the state at all. So Rachel explained at the beginning that maybe the unemployment right now, it's not exempt in Ohio and they may change the law. So I don't know if anyone wants to add to that. Awesome. Well, I think that I'm just going through the questions. It seems like we were able to cover the questions that people were able to ask. But I just wanted to thank everyone again, our panelists. So David, Rachel and Elizabeth who gave their time to provide such an informative discussion and for our audience for your terrific questions. And again, you'll receive an email tomorrow with some resources that we talked about as well as the full video of tonight's session. Just so folks can look back on different resources and different things that we talked about. And so from all of us at ProPublica and Co for America, thank you for joining us and have a great night and we'll see you next time.