Taxes & Bankruptcy

I write about this every year because it is a recurring issue for people facing bankruptcy. Taxes have a bearing on bankruptcy whether you are owed a refund or whether you owe the IRS. Therefore, they must always be taken into account, but it is especially important during this first handful of months each year.

The first thing to remember is that if you are owed a refund at the time of filing, that refund is an asset of the estate and must be reported in Schedule B and hopefully exempted in Schedule C. If you owe taxes, they are reported on either Schedule F or E depending on whether they are priority debts or not. Your attorney can help sort that out. Tax debt and tax refunds arise on December 31st each year. So, if you file a bankruptcy on January 1st, then you must account for the tax situation that arose from just the day before. So, even if you do not file your tax return until April 15th (or October if you file an extension) you either owe taxes for the year that just ended or you are getting a refund (rare indeed is the person who lands right at zero, but I suppose it happens).

If you owe taxes for the preceding year, they will be considered a “priority” debt and a debt that cannot be discharged. In a Chapter 7, the IRS and any state agency you owe taxes to will begin collection activity after your Chapter 7 is closed. In a Chapter 13, you will have to make sure you pay enough into the plan for those taxes to be paid in full over the life of the Chapter 13 along with 4% interest for federal income taxes and 5% interest on Kentucky income taxes.

If you are owed a refund, you need to report the refund as accurately as possible in your schedules of assets. This means you will likely have to run at least a rough draft of your tax return to get a good faith estimate of what is due back to you. Then, you will attempt to cover the entire amount in “wild card” exemptions. If you cannot exempt the entire amount, you will need to make a determination with help from your attorney as to whether you should wait until you receive the refund or press on.

If you decide to wait until you receive the refund, then the smart thing to do would be to pay for the bankruptcy and spend the money on necessities, such as food or needed repairs to you car. Do NOT use it to pay unsecured debt, especially not to relatives. Your attorney can help you know how much you can hold onto and exempt.

Your attorney can also help you determine if older income tax debts, such as those that arose a few years prior to the bankruptcy, will be discharged in your Chapter 7 or 13. All of this is acceptable pre-petition planning to make the most of the fresh start bankruptcy allows.