Tax Term of the Week

Substitute for Return- If a taxpayer has not filed a return and the IRS feels it can collect from the money earned, an IRS Revenue Officer may file a Substitute for Return (SFR). When an SFR is filed, the agent lists all of the income reported to the IRS for that year, but only gives the taxpayer one exemption and only the standard deduction (i.e. nothing is itemized). Even if for the past 10 years the taxpayer has itemized, the IRS prepares the return in their favor. If the taxpayer has children the IRS tries to file the return based on the information from the previous years (i.e. married filing joint with 2 children), but IRS will only file this way if they have previous returns showing this info.