Innocent Spouse Tax Relief

When a married taxpayer files a joint tax return to get the benefit of the filing status, the liability becomes  joint and several. Joint and several means that multiple parties can be held liable for the same event or act and all parties involved may individually be responsible for the total amount owed. The IRS is not required to enforce a collection action against a specific spouse first, even if the divorce decree states otherwise.

Innocent Spouse Tax Relief alleviates the spouse who was unaware of an understatement or underpayment of taxes. In order to file an innocent spouse request, one spouse is generally, but not always, required to prove that he or she had no actual knowledge or no reason to know of the understatement or underpayment of tax. Some reasons that may be considered justification for requesting Innocent Spouse are forging of a signature by the other spouse, fear of asking for information in conjunction with spousal abuse, or denial of access to financial records.  There are many other factors the Internal Revenue Service takes into consideration.