Ambiguous Tax Questions for Citizen Dummies

We occasionally check over our list of favorite contributors, and we noticed that it had been almost a year since the last time we trotted out one of our more prolific nominees. He's an guy named Tom Lutzenberger, who spread his peculiar form of misinformation across a wide variety of categories during his time at eHow.com. Whether it's plumbing, mining, the oil industry, or HVAC; Tom's there to muddy the infowaters. Given that the guy has an MBA, though, you'd think that he'd get the answer to "When Can You Start Filing Taxes?"¹ right for PocketSense.com... but you'd be wrong.

We'll give Tom this: he did a workmanlike job of explaining that you can't file your Form 1040EZ until after you receive any and all relevant W-2 and 1099 forms. He also mentioned that those must be sent out "before" January 31 (yeah, right...). So what's not to like?

Well, we think Lutzenberger was suffering from a form of tunnel vision: he read the question as "What's the earliest I can file my tax return to get my refund?" That is not, however, the way the question is worded. It's just as likely – perhaps even more likely – that the OQ wanted to know if his five-year-old had to file taxes after earning big bucks as a TV star. Don't laugh: we're pretty sure the Olson Twins had to pay taxes during the run of "Full House," in which they first appeared at the age of one. So Tom's rather oddly-worded statement,

"Because the tax year for most taxpayers matches the calendar year, the earliest filing date must be after the related tax year ends..."

...may have been technically correct, but off-topic.

At the very least, we think Lutzenberger's advice should have mentioned that very young people have to pay taxes on earned income once they've exceeded the value of their standard deduction (for 2018, that's $1050). If a child has unearned income, there's also a threshold value. Suffice it to say that, like most tax questions, a bit of calculation is involved in determining whether a minor child owes income taxes. Ask the IRS for Publication 929 for help. You'd think that, instead of padding his "answer" with all manner of fluff, Lutzenberger could have addressed both questions in his PocketSense answer. That, however, was never the eHow way: it was always full speed ahead on whatever narrow focus the freelancer's little mind seized upon. But never mind, that's why so many of our Dumbass of the Day winners, like Tom, come from the site.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   pocketsense.com/can-start-filing-taxes-23918.html

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