Dear Liz: Help! We’ve just received devastating news from our accountant that we owe around $11,000 to the IRS and the state for 2012 taxes. The reason for the huge bill is that we cleaned out my husband’s IRA to pay for our son’s college expenses. My husband is almost 65 and working part time after being laid off, and I’m 61 with a full-time job. What is the best way to pay this bill? Here are the options I can think of: 1) Cash out my three-month emergency certificate of deposit of $12,000 that I’ve saved to cover expenses in case I get laid off. 2) Take money out of my IRA. 3) Use a credit card check that will be at zero percent for the first 12 months and then will slide to 8.9%. 4) Arrange a payment loan with the IRS. 5) Sell our house in which we have 70% equity. Which is best?
Answer: Let’s take No. 2 off the table, shall we? If you learn nothing else from this experience, it should be that tapping retirement funds can trigger a big (and often unnecessary) tax bill.
Selling your house over an $11,000 bill is overkill, so let’s eliminate that option as well. Which leads us to three remaining possibilities: Use cash, borrow from a credit card or borrow from the IRS.
Borrowing incurs costs. That zero percent credit offer almost certainly comes with a fee, which is usually 3% to 5% of the total. If you can’t pay the balance within a year, you start incurring interest charges.
The short-term rate the IRS charges for installment loans is pretty low — lately it’s been around 3% — but you also typically incur late-payment penalties. The penalty typically is one-half of 1% of the tax you owe each month or part of a month until the bill is paid in full. If you file by the return due date, that rate drops to one-quarter of 1% for any month in which an installment agreement is in effect. The maximum penalty is 25% of the tax due.
How much either option will cost you depends on how long you take to pay the bill. The cost for cashing out the CD is, by contrast, almost zero. Whatever tiny amount of interest you’re getting is far less than what borrowing would cost you. If you should get laid off before you rebuild your emergency fund, your access to cheap credit could come in handy.
Going forward, let your son pay for his college expenses and conserve what’s left of your resources for retirement.
I owed the IRS $12,500 for the 2008 tax year and did the installment plan with them at $225 a month, which I accelerated at the end when I could. The debt was from an inheritance gone bad. I used the money to pay student loans and later found out that my aunt cashed in the bond that was supposed to pay the estate’s taxes so I got stuck with the IRA distribution as income. Yippee! Anyhow, the plan cost $1900 in penalties and interest. Penalties and interest accrue on only the outstanding principal and so if you are in a position to pay it down quickly, but not quickly enough to enjoy the interest free credit card, this may be an option. I just paid it off in December, so it took me longer. I personally found the IRS very easy to work with. I never had an issue with the direct withdrawals. They were actually quite pleasant.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Meghan!