
Quoting
isitlegalmk
I just finished doing my families tax return with the old Turbo Tax software and now realize how utterly screwed we are. I work for a website as an independent contract. I have a salary paid monthly via personal check where taxes are not withheld. This is my first year, but I excepted I'd have to pay several thousand dollars to cover that from the year. But I just realized that I have a $9,800 tax burden I now owe the IRS on my federal return! When asked how I'd pay, I just selected the installment plan to simply buy me some time to not only get over the utter shock, but figure out how my family is going to survive this. We're not in debt and always manage our money responsibility, but this is just crippling to us and our budget (considering it's not just me, but my wife who is a stay at home Mom with no income and my two infant sons).
What do I do? The installment plan is only good once a year and next year I'm going to be hit with another 10k on top of this one, as I see it just mounting up. Is there any legal recourse or assistant I can get? I assume the IRS is not in the habit of just forgiving federal income tax debt. Needless to say, this will be devastating to my family to have this saddled on our back. The irony is the better job opportunity cut out a lot of tax breaks that would have helped, even though my income is not really that much different than last year (within a few grand).
Any advice on how we can better manage this sudden crushing financial burden is much appreciated!