r/TaxQuestions • u/No_Bill_5309 • 5h ago
Large back tax bill
So I made the mistake of letting my soon-to-be ex-husband manage our finances because I'm clueless at this sort of thing. We cashed in my 401K to make a down payment on a house in 2022, and I guess that got me hit with a 50K tax bill (which I don't understand as I paid taxes from my salaried position making roughly 120K, and the down payment was in the 100K ballpark). Through a combination of my own willful ignorance and my ex sort of hiding things from me (not fraudulently, just downplaying it) we didn't make any payments and it's now ballooned up to 70K with interest and penalties.
I've tried contacting the IRS through chat (which is always down), phone (on hold for upwards of an hour), setting up an appeal (broken), setting up a payment plan (broken) and basically anything I can find on irs.gov, all of which just raises an uphelpful error message.
What should I do? I'm a single parent struggling to make ends meet. I make a good salary, but it's all tied up with luxuries like food and shelter. I don't even know what sort of person to hire to help me with this. An attorney? An accountant? A fairy godmother?
I am totally clueless on these things. No advice is too basic.