A taxing morning

Back in, oh, 2015 or so, my tax accountant told me I didn’t need to file my taxes anymore if my only income was Social Security. Well, cool. One less hassle.

But I saw a video yesterday that had me questioning his professional advice. He has since retired, so I couldn’t simply call or email him to learn whether tax law regarding my situation had changed in the past decade. I asked the All-knowing Gods of the Internet instead. 

“Are there federal taxes on Social Security retirement?”

The answer was, “It depends.” Not if my SS was less than this number, but X% of my income would be taxable if it was between this number and this other number. I fell into the latter group.

I figured I should do the responsible thing and find out how much I might owe and whether I could pay it.

First I tried signing into TurboTax but got in a dead end loop with account verification. So I went directly to the IRS and learned they had free online filing. Cool. But first I needed to set up an ID.me account. That was a process. Fill out name, phone and email, take the verification number they sent me and enter it, use the link they sent me to take photos of two forms of ID, get another verification number, take a video of myself to match against the IDs. Answer some questions about whether I was doing this on my own or whether someone else was making me do it, get on a video conference call so they could see me live and judge how easily I replied to more questions, then finally get cleared with them and the IRS.

Then it was back to the IRS site to be guided through the questions on the tax form. That was easy but tedious. When it was all through, they said I didn’t owe anything. So all that work to end up where I was with my previous semi-ignorant assumptions. A little peace of mind, I guess.