arethinn: Unicorn from The Last Unicorn with text "O RLY?" (skeptical (unicorn orly?))
(edited with additional information prompted by [personal profile] teaotter's comment)

Has anyone in the studio audience ever filed an amended tax return where you discovered you owed additional tax for the year, but your original overpayment for that year was enough to cover this additional amount (i.e., had you filed it originally with this new information, you would not have a balance due, but merely a smaller overpayment)? I elected to have the overpayment applied to this year's estimated tax, so I did not receive a refund.

I'm having trouble with the fact that the 1040X instructions explicitly acknowledge this case in the introduction to the section for Refund or Amount You Owe ("If the results show that you owe, it is because you don’t have enough additional withholding [I do] or because filing your original return with the information you have now would have resulted in a smaller overpayment or a balance due"), but the specific instructions for line 20 (Amount you owe, i.e. the difference between my revised calculation of tax liability and what was originally reported) don't address it. There's a line to enter the original overpayment (line 18), but not one to subtract the new, additional amount owed from that (to prove that you already paid enough). The instructions for the line list a whole bunch of ways to pay, but nothing like "If the amount on line 20 is less than line 18, you do not need to send a payment." I guess they assume you took it as a refund and thus now would owe money back, but I didn't do that. Halp?

Date: Jul. 17th, 2018 09:51 pm (UTC)From: [personal profile] teaotter
teaotter: a girl in a pink coat that reads "anti social social club" (Default)
Have you already received your refund from your originally filed 1040? If not, I'd suggest waiting to file the 1040-X. (Unless you've got a pressing need to correct the record ASAP, waiting an extra month or two won't get you into trouble.)

The 1040-X assumes that the IRS has already started (or finished) processing your original tax form and therefore will be providing (or already has provided) the overpayment from that tax form to you as a refund.

Date: Jul. 18th, 2018 01:53 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] teaotter
teaotter: a girl in a pink coat that reads "anti social social club" (Default)
Because of how the IRS works, if you opted to apply your 2017 tax over-payment to your 2018 taxes, it's now in a bucket in your tax account waiting for 2018 charges. It can't be applied to 2017 any more, to the best of my understanding.

So you'll need to pay the additional amount when you file the 1040-X, and your 2018 carryover will be what you designated on the original return.

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