Didn’t Get Your Tax Documents?

What do you do if you know you don’t have all your tax documents? If you normally receive a tax document that you know you didn’t receive (or can’t find) , sometimes you can still get the information in other ways. If you are missing an income document, such as a W2 or 1099, you can try contacting your employer and requesting a copy. A lot of companies have them available online now.

If you didn’t get a mortgage document, you can call your mortgage company(ies) and request the information over the phone. The mortgage company might also have and Private Mortgage Insurance and/or Property Tax payment information as well. If they don’t have the Property Tax information, you can try looking it up in the tax records, or ask your Realtor to help you get the correct figures.

Missing Income If you still have trouble locating an income Document, you can request a copy of your Wage and Income Transcript from the IRS, but unfortunately, most recent year information may not be complete until July.

You can’t wait until then to file your return, so what to do? You can file a Form 4868 Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File, and estimate your tax for the year. This is the best tool to use if you know you don’t have all the correct information.

If your income and life is the same as last year, the easiest way to estimate these is to use the information from last year’s return. If your life is much the same, no additions or subtractions from your family, no new home or school enrollment, then your tax will be close to last year’s return.

If you know you are missing income, you can add what you think is missing to your known income and look up the Tax in the Tax Tables for that year. (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf)

The IRS is quick to point out, however, that an Extension to File is NOT an extension to pay any taxes due. If you owed taxes last year, you should send a check in the mail to the IRS for the amount that you estimate you owe, to the address indicated in the Form Instructions. On your check, be sure to include your SSN and the Tax Year that the check is for.

Missed Income Sometimes you don’t know that you didn’t include all of your income information until after you file. Maybe you find the document later and realize that your return is incorrect, or maybe you even get a letter from the IRS saying that your information did not match theirs. The first thing to do is make sure that the document or letter is correct, that you did omit income from your return.

If so, ask your Tax Professional to file an Amendment for you.If your taxes are simple, you might be able to prepare an Amendment yourself! However, if you itemize or took a tax credit, you will need software to prepare the Amendment.

If you get a letter from the IRS concerning missing income, it might be worth your while to have your Tax Professional prepare a 1040X Amendment just to check the math of the IRS. I have often found that my clients actually owe less than was originally stated by the IRS. If so, you can file the amendment and pay the lesser amount once the IRS accepts it.

Filling out a 1040X If you decide to prepare a 1040X Amendment yourself, you will put the information originally included in your 1040 filing in the left column of this form. In the middle you should enter the missing information, and the change to the return is calculated along the right side of this form.

Any new income would go in the middle column on line 1, added with the originally reported income in the first column goes into the third column as the corrected income. For Line 6, you will need to look up the correct tax for the new amount of income. This information can be found in the Tax Tables for 2016.

On Line 12 you will put any tax that was withheld from your missing income. The new amount will be in the right column. On line 18 you must put any refund you received from your previous filing of that year’s 1040. If Line 18 is larger than the total payments on Line 17, you may owe. On the other hand, if you withheld enough from this missing income, you might break even or even get another refund.

One last thing to pay attention to on the 1040X Amendment is page 2. In Part III, you must indicate why changes are being made to the original return. In this case it would be, “Filed to include income missed in original filing. “ And then last but not least, you must sign and date the bottom of the return. If filing jointly, you must both sign and date the bottom.

If you have questions or need help with tax reporting, please email me at crismkeller@gmail.com. If you found this information helpful, please like or follow my page, or share my posts with your friends.