 Internal Revengers IRS Tax News. IRS Reminds Taxpayers. IRS Free File Remains Open Until November 17th. Honestly, something just doesn't seem right when you hear those two words IRS and free like right next to each other like that. I mean is it just me or does that make you feel incredibly suspicious? The IRS providing free file seems kind of like the Joker giving Batman free tickets to a party. So you know within five seconds after entering the room, Batman will end up hanging from a rope over like a pool of sharks or something. His bat belt containing both his wallet and his bat shark repellent having been stolen. Holy tax code Batman. Who could have suspected the free tickets were a trap? You're right Robin. If only we could find in this restrictive tax net a hole large enough to break free and then somehow retrieve my bat belt with my shark repellent. And Robin's like so you can fend off the sharks in the pool Batman. No replies Batman. So I can fend off the Joker's IRS auditors. Anyways first the joke. Here at accounting instruction we don't just teach accounting. We're role models teaching all kinds of important stuff including soft skills. What what would you say you do here? Well look I already told you I deal with the damn customer so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people? For example when picking your nose it's best to use your left hand even when picking your right nostril which is both difficult and counterintuitive at first but the strategy yields massive sticky dividends. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards. Because like your right hand is then free to do other important stuff. Special agent Utah. This is not some job flipping burgers at the local drive-in. Like eating, calculating, and like shaking other people's hands and everything. Mr. Pizza Guy sir. Four of the double cheese and sausage. Here it is. Mr. Spicoli you're on dangerous ground here. You are causing a major disturbance on my time. Otherwise you might get boogers on the food calculator and other people. You know I've been thinking about this Mr. Han. If I'm here and you're here doesn't that make it our time? We certainly did nothing wrong with little feast on our time. Which isn't good. Honestly picking your nose with your left hand is one of those important soft skills business employers really pick up on. Ah thanks. I'm so hungry I could eat the ass in out of a dead rhino. Could have had you give me three of these things. Resulting in you being more likely to be picked. Come on in and try not to ruin everything by being you. By the left index finger of the HR department and then nonchalantly wiped onto the back of some office chair in a cubicle. Run. Where you'll harden into a crusty old shell of your former self. So make sure to subscribe and ring that bell icon so you don't miss out on anything. IR 2022-199 November 15th 2022 Washington. The internal revenue service today reminded those who still need to file their 2021 tax returns that the IRS free file there's a link to that here remains open until November 17th and can help those who qualify claim the child tax credit recovery rebate credit or earned income tax credit. There's links to those items here. So we're talking about the 2021 tax return which typically would be filed by say April 15th of 2022 if you then put an extension on it that usually goes up until October 15th of 2022. So you're past the deadline even if on extension unless you have some other unusual circumstance and usually the access to the free file software which is actually third party provided software that the IRS has somehow got them to provide for free usually up until the extension cutoff has now been extended beyond that up until November 17th. So if you have not filed the tax return you might be in a situation where you could say I don't need to file a tax return but remember there's a difference between not needing to file a tax return and not having it be beneficial to file a tax return those are two different questions if for example you have income below a certain threshold generally below say the standard deduction you may not be required to file because you're not going to owe any tax the IRS is not going to come after you if you don't file but some people for some people the tax return isn't actually a something that you're going to pay right it's actually something that you might get a benefit from and so if your income is below a certain threshold it's likely especially in 2021 that you might still get money back from certain types of credits in particular such as the recovery or the credits the child tax credit the recovery rebate credit the earned income credit and these are going to be refundable types of credits meaning that even if your tax goes below zero you might still get a benefit from them therefore since you have access to the free file software up through November for anyone who hasn't filed even if you're not required to even if you don't think it's beneficial might be worth checking out because it doesn't cost anything and you might be surprised that you could have access to some of these credits and it could be a beneficial thing so you know check it out so these and other tax benefits were expanded under last year's American Rescue Plan Act and other recent legislation the only way to get these valuable benefits however is to file a 2021 tax return last month the internal revenue service sent letters to more than 9 million individuals and families who appeared to qualify for a variety of key tax benefits but had not yet claimed them by filing the 2021 federal income tax return so many in this group may be eligible to claim some or all of the 2021 recovery rebate credit so the recovery rebate credit you'll recall is tied to the stimulus payments there were three stimulus payments that went out the last stimulus payment was tied to the 2021 tax return so therefore if you didn't get it for whatever reason then the recovery rebate credit is the remedy for that the first two were tied to the 2020 tax return so there's a recovery rebate credit for 2020 for that one if you did get the proper amount of your stimulus check then you're not going to get any more benefit you would think from the recovery rebate credit in general then you got the child tax credit there were substantial changes to the child tax credit most people are well aware if they qualify for the child tax credit but there might be some that have unusual circumstances such as someone has a child dependent and they're not the immediate parent for example so there might be some situations where people don't realize maybe they qualify but uh even if you do qualify then you also might in 2021 be thinking well I already got my benefit because they sent it to me in a prepayment or something like that but even that they only gave you half of it because they actually increase they like increase the credit substantially and then gave out half of it or they tried to if they had everything correct based on the prior year on the estimate in 2021 so there's that one which is huge and then the earned income tax credit which again most people that are in that area probably are aware of but you might have more people that have the lower income in the last couple years due to just life situations job situations which they weren't in that situation before and might not be aware of how the earned income tax credit works it is quite complex credit although it has from an economic standpoint benefits like trying to incentivize people to be able to earn instead of locking people into not providing for themselves due to the fact that they would lose the benefit if they did which is a problem with a lot of the benefit programs but in order to exchange for that it's a complex credit and they made it even more complex in 2021 giving you possibilities to possibly use the prior year income to calculate your credit if it was larger than or the 2019 years is pretty it's pretty weird tax software will help you with that credit as well hopefully walking you through the process so and other tax credit so you got depending on their personal and family situation the letter printed in both English and Spanish provided a brief overview of each of these credits often individuals and families can get these extended tax benefits there's a link to that here even if they have little or no income from a job business or other source this means that many people who don't normally need to file a tax return should do so this year even if they haven't been required to file in recent years so remember the fact that you're not required to file doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out I mean I would almost say like anybody should at least check it out at this point unless you're trying to like stay under the radar unless you're saying hey I think the iris just wants my information because they want to track me I'm staying I'm staying under the red car I don't care other than that you know you should probably want to file the tax return even if your income was low because there's a lot of these refundable credits and whatnot so there's no penalty for a refund claimed on a tax return filed after the regular April 2022 tax deadline the fastest and easiest way to get a refund is to file an accurate return electronically and choose direct deposit so they're all about the the electronic filing these days that's the fastest thing for the iris's side of things obviously they are promoting that for their own reasons but also it should be the fastest way to get a refund so you want to do that but again if you don't want to give the iris your banking information and possibly if you've waited this long already it might not be that the the speed of the of the refund might not be the biggest detail for you at this point if you've already waited till now so so take that into consideration certainly to help people claim these benefits without charge irs free file will remain open this year until November 17th 2022 available only at irs.gov forward slash free file there's a link to that here irs free file lets people whose incomes are $73,000 or less to to file a return online for free using brand name software so it's not software from the irs it's not government software because it was if it was frankly it would suck right so it's actually proprietary software that's competing on the market which somehow the irs has kind of got them to offer it for free so you're going to be using you know good software so irs free file is sponsored by the free file alliance a partnership between the irs and tax software industry partnership right okay it might be a co-word i'm imagining a more coercive partnering situation but anyway a public private partnership that provides their brand name products for free irs free file provides two ways for taxpayers to prepare and file their 2021 federal tax return online for free irs partner sites traditional irs free file provides free online tax preparation and filing options on irs partner sites individual taxpayers whose adjusted gross incomes that's the aegi is 73,000 or less qualify for any irs free file partner offers free file lets individuals electronically prepare and file their federal income tax online using guided tax preparation free fillable forms so for taxpayers sues aji irs greater than 73,000 there's the free fillable forms option there's a link to that here now note that they like to say that they offer these free fillable forms to be able to say hey we the irs are providing something this is my interpretation by the way that that we the irs are providing something free for everyone but most people aren't going to really want to use the free file fillable forms because if you're below 73,000 you're going to want to use the software because it gives you a huge double check over your numbers and some guidance even tax professionals would greatly welcome and do use software and two because if you're over 73,000 your tax return is likely more complex and therefore you're not going to want to do free fillable forms you would think which is closer to basically just filling out the forms by hand which means you're way more subject to to miss changes to the tax law that might be picked up from software it gives you some double checks some diagnostics on it and you're and you're way more likely to make math errors at that point now it might be the case that 73,000 if you're around there you still have a fairly basic return I mean your return might actually be easier than a low income individual at these at this point because the credits involved on the low income side especially like the earned income credit these refundable credits when they're refundable when they're not refundable the phaseouts are way complex but as your income gets you know over this amount it also gets complex because now you've got more money and possibly more income sources and so on savings and different sources of income on that side of things and due to having more money you might want to try to be investing your money in such a way that you have tax benefits for it and so on so you have planning components with it as well so if your incomes above this threshold you probably don't want to use the free fillable forms I would then maybe think about paying for the software even though you can't get it for free so that it can help you fill out the form accurately even though you have to pay for it or paying for someone to help you with the tax return meaning a tax professional if you're looking for a tax professional I would then look for somebody who's going to help you not just get to the immediate paying point of filling out the return but also is going to be there for planning in the future due to the fact that your income is starting to rise to the point where you might need some more planning stuff any case it provides electronic federal tax forms that can be filled out and filed online for free to use this option taxpayers should know how to prepare their own tax return so always start at irs.gov irs.gov irs.gov v for victory over taxes so from the home page select file your taxes for free use the irs free file lookup tool there's a link to that here to narrow the list of providers and the browser all offers page there's a link to that here to see a full list of providers follow the link to the chosen irs free file providers page prior year returns can be filled can be filed electronically only by registered tax preparers there's a link to that here for the two previous tax years otherwise taxpayers must print sign and mail prior year returns so notice that the irs is all about this electronic filing but that's that there's still a limit on the electronic filing so if you if you're going back like five years then you might not be able electronically file because they don't have the whole system up for you to do it you know back then you gotta actually you got a paper file so filing on time actually saves you pain and agony as well because then you should be more it's more likely you're going to be up to date on the current tax code your current tax situation you'll be able to use the electronic filing you might have access to the free file if you get a few years behind trying to recap and and file past past tax returns gets complicated because you might be past the statute of limitations in the first place and then you might have limitations on how to file getting software that's old to help you out to file it and so on and so forth so the irs directory of federal tax return preparers with credentials and selected qualifications lists qualified local providers there's a link to that here so there's links to the free file stuff so you still have to pay your taxes but at least you know you don't have to pay for the software is the idea you know they so that's the iris getting you into the room and then they hang you over the shark tank but you know at least you save some money because they're gonna they're gonna you're gonna the sharks gonna eat you no matter what you're gonna lose an arm it's okay just just deal with it any case there'll be a link to all this stuff in the description