What is Innocent Spouse Relief?
Innocent spouse relief can help you not have to pay extra taxes if your spouse didn’t pay enough taxes on your joint tax return and you didn’t know about the mistakes. But innocent spouse relief is only for taxes due on your spouse’s income from their job or their own business.
You can’t claim relief for taxes due on your own income, household employment taxes, Individual Shared Responsibility payments, business taxes, or trust fund recovery penalties for employment taxes.
Who Can Get Innocent Spouse Relief?
You might be able to get innocent spouse relief if you filed a joint return with your spouse, your taxes were not enough because of mistakes on your return, you didn’t know about the mistakes, and you live in a community property state.
Mistakes that cause not enough taxes include unreported income, wrong deductions or credits, and wrong values given for assets.
When you file a joint tax return with your spouse, no matter how you file, you are both responsible for the tax and any interest or penalty due. This is true even if you get divorced later, a divorce decree says that your spouse is responsible for the taxes, or your spouse earned all the income.
You can’t get relief in any year when you signed an offer in compromise with the IRS, you signed a closing agreement with the IRS covering the same taxes, a court made a final decision denying you relief, or you were part of a related court proceeding and didn’t ask for relief.
What to Do If You Get a Notice
If you get a notice that you owe tax on a joint return, you should quickly follow the instructions in your letter. You might also find out that you owe extra taxes because of an audit. You should ask for spouse relief as soon as you find out about the taxes due.
Other Types of Innocent Spouse Relief
When you apply for innocent spouse relief, IRS automatically apply these types of relief if you are eligible. You don’t have to ask for them separately.
- Separation of Liability Relief: If your joint tax return didn’t pay enough taxes and you are divorced, separated, or no longer living with your spouse, you might be able to pay only your share of the not enough taxes.
- Equitable Relief: If you can’t get other forms of relief, you might get relief from paying taxes that your spouse didn’t pay enough of or didn’t pay if it would be unfair to make you responsible based on all the facts and circumstances.
Knowing About Mistakes
You can’t claim innocent spouse relief for not enough taxes if you knew about the mistakes on your return or a reasonable person in similar circumstances would have known about the mistakes.
You knew if you knew that your spouse got unreported income, you knew facts that made a deduction or credit not allowed, or you knew that your spouse deducted false or inflated expenses.
Exception for Victims of Domestic Abuse
You might be able to get relief even if you knew about mistakes if you were the victim of spousal abuse or domestic violence before signing the return, you didn’t challenge the items on the return because of fear, or you signed the joint return because you were pressured or threatened.
When to Request Relief
You must ask for innocent spouse relief within 2 years of getting an IRS notice of a tax due.
For more detail, please find this link.
