<p>Yes they are LEGALLY married.</p>
<p>This thread is getting more outlandish…first…why would you continue to go to an accountant who ended up in JAIL. Find someone else. Your parents CAN rectify this. They can amend last year’s return…and do this year’s correctly. They need someone honest helping them with this.</p>
<p>Is there a trusted person who can help them navigage this issue? They need to find someone.</p>
<p>^^I think the non English speaking parents is that other thread.</p>
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<p>Any penalties they face won’t be because of you, it will because of what they did.</p>
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<p>Your dad isn’t innocent in all this, he isn’t a lame duck. He is blaming her but he benefited from the situation which is why he allowed it to continue.</p>
<p>You can’t control what your parents have done or what they will do. It would be a good idea for you to attend any meetings with accountants to find out what is going on but be prepared for very bad news. I think you are screwed.</p>
<p>It is very easy to find accountants who have not done time. Your parents should find someone with a better reputation but something tells me that they won’t.</p>
<p>@ Pea “I think you are screwed.” Why am I screwed??? if my dad straightens his **** out for this year and then if it is done right next year, why in the **** will i be completely screwed??
my dad is really on my side here. he is pushing to see an accountant… i will talk to my grandmother about it too, to see if she can speak to my mom about it. </p>
<p>i hate this situation. its so irresponsible of them :(</p>
<p>but thanks, being able to afford a top college is so important to me.
i have worked so *<strong><em>ing hard my whole *</em></strong>ing life-- i am a number one in my class, and i spend hours a week in other leadership postions, busting my ****ing ass off day after day just to get into a top school.</p>
<p>I’m sorry wahkimoocow. This is not your fault. It’s your parents fault for doing what they have been doing for years. As someone who has had to take out loans to pay taxes, it makes me angry people are doing this. If your family refuses to find another accountant, you need to consult with a tax attorney (who you’ll probably need to consult with anyway). Remember, the HYPs and other prestigious schools go through your finances in detail. I’ve had to send them 2 years of personal and corporate tax returns. </p>
<p>Pea says your screwed because it looks like your family owes a lot of money in back taxes and fees.</p>
<p>I’m sorry too wahkimoocow. I know I’m not mincing words because I think it would be better for you to face reality. I don’t think your parents will be willing to go the route of straightening things out because after years of tax fraud the back taxes and penalties will be enormous. They are more interested in things going the way they have been, you mother has told you as much. Was your accountant in prison for violations related to his work? Did he sign off on your mother’s tax returns? Unless he wants to go back to prison he won’t help with trying to straighten things out, he’ll want to keep from being implicated. If the situation is as you have presented it there will be nothing HYP or any other school that wants to offer you financial aid can do for you.</p>
<p>^^we don’t know that they owe alot of money…just as a comment…we really don’t know that the difference between HOH and filing married will be all that different, “we” just don’t know so I don’t think we should scare wahkimoocow. It is just as conceiveable that it could go the other way if the mom was simply avoiding have the check come to both of them and the tax could actually be lower…we just don’t know. But definitely the OP should be with her parents if they go talk to someone about the taxes as it will definitely impact where the OP is able to go to college, no doubt about that.</p>
<p>I am not as knowledgeable on tax issues as some of the other posters here, but a couple of questions come to mind:</p>
<p>If the accountant has been convicted of tax fraud wouldn’t the IRS look more closely at his clients’ returns?</p>
<p>And I’m not buying that your dad is completely at the mercy of your mom’s whims. It seems to me that he could file “married filing separately” for his own income if he really wanted to be legally correct. (Although that might trigger the IRS to examine her tax forms more closely.)</p>
<p>It’s not looking good for you to be able to get the federal aid and such that require FAFSA and CSS.</p>
<p>However, that doesn’t mean your only option is community college.</p>
<p>What are your stats? You may qualify for really high merit from some schools that don’t require FAFSAs or any tax records.</p>
<p>What worries me is that your parents are breaking the law.</p>
<p>Regardless of their current or past tax issues, the IRS has on record whatever your parents have or have not told them, and until they are audited you really need to make sure your information matches theirs. If your mom is pulling a scam and getting away with it, then FAFSA will not know any differently until the IRS catches it. Most importantly they need to straighten themselves out, but when it comes time for you to file the FAFSA you need the numbers from the parent who has been claiming you, and unfortunately your FAFSA will have to coincide with their lies, which includes you claiming you do not know anything about your father, etc… I am sorry they did that to you and I am hesitant to give you this advice except that it is not your fault and you deserve a college education.</p>
<p>so what if i only put my mother’s information down?-- she claims me.
will this be okay–as in will i be able to qualify this way?</p>
<p>and note-- I do not know why the man was in jail–but he came out and still practiced accounting.</p>
<p>Yes i know they are breaking the law</p>
<p>But ■■■■, that is what i wanted to avoid 
i didnt want to LIE about my father. she’s just like when it asks for his address write unknown… i hate that so much! (i have did it before when applying to a precollege) i feel so guilty inside and it makes it seem like my dad is not part of my life…it just hurts me :/</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids --below are my stats</p>
<p>Academics
Current GPA: 4.0 on a 4.0 scale
Most rigorous schedule–6 aps</p>
<p>SAT
Waiting for March results–Took a practice test-- 1950 but im improving ( i went from a 1540 to a 1950 in 2 weeks )
610 m, 610 cr, 730 w
SAT IIs pending
ACT pending</p>
<p>LEADERSHIP
-Student Rep to Board of Education (only student on board)
-County Director for official state student political organization (more than 2,000 members state wide)–worked on '08 and '09 campaigns
-Editor (main)-- school newspaper
-NHS (shoe in for vice president)
-Varsity Soccer
-Vice President of Class (10)
-Financial adviser for an organization (music based–family owned)
–volunterring</p>
<p>Other
– I attend a Saturday program (called saturday scholars) every saturday morning 
with Rutgers University.
– Poetry publications at local library
– Numerous awards for excellence in world language, english, math, science</p>
<p>** writing is my number one strength so my essays should be pretty strong</p>
<p>also my dad is technically the only real source of income from my family–he makes like 50,000
my mom just recently became unemployed so she decided to go back to school (at a community college)
since my mom has no income…wouldnt that be soo weird to have a family of 5 with no income to show no signs of being on welfare/etc etc?</p>
<p>For FAFSA only schools it would mean you would have to lie on FAFSA. One of the questions on FAFSA is about whether your parents are married. If you say yes then put only your Mom’s tax info and your dad is not on it, it will raise red flags. If you lie and say they are not, then you will have lied on a federal form. At the end of FAFSA you basically swear that what you put is the truth.</p>
<p>Plus if you are talking about HYPS they require CSS and would require both parents information even if they were not actually together. If you say they are together then same problem as above. If you say they are not together then most CSS schools require non custodial parent information. That would require your dad to produce tax returns.</p>
<p>Your dad has income of $50k and is not filing a tax return?</p>
<p>really? ****! okay okay let me think -_-
the only freaking solution here is to go to an accountant and somehow get my dad to file to show he has an income.
i dont know how hard it would be for my mom to chage her status.</p>
<p>AND GUYS THANK YOU FOR ALL THIS FREAKING INFO! i let my mom read a few responses and she is now in disbelief about the consequences of not filing correctly.
she is willing to change things ad so is my dad, we just dont know what the freaking penalty will be–im scared :/</p>