I’m guessing that truly down-and-out homeless people don’t bother with filing income tax returns, especially if they have no job-related income to report.
There are, however, people who have jobs but live out of their cars or RVs. What do these people put down for a home address? Where do these people receive mail (e.g. W-2 forms)? A PO box seems like the obvious answer to that last question, but if you’re living out of your car, chances are you don’t have spare money to afford a PO box. So…?
I’d assume you could walk into the business office of your company and get a W-2 in person. In any case you no longer needed to “attach” a W-2 when you file. All you need to know is the numbers. And even if you guessed those wrong, the IRS would correct them. Now how they’d get their letter to you that you owed more, I don’t know.
If you have a job, maybe you could get mail delivered to your place of employment? Not sure how picky the IRS is with mail delivery address vs. actual residency address.
My understanding is that a number of community service organizations (shelters, health clinics, the salvation army, etc.) will allow you to use their business as an address for filing your tax returns. I don’t think you need a fixed address. There’s a discussion here from a non-profit focused on getting low-income persons their tax credits.
PO Boxes are cheap. I know from personal interactions that at least a certain percentage maintain a PO Box so they don’t have to keep switching mailing addresses. We have a decent number of homeless that are put up in local motels by government programs. Some use the motel address. Some us a PO Box.
The post office still apparently has General Delivery, where you have to call at the post office to receive your mail. I don’t know if this would be an acceptable option for receiving W-2 forms or refund checks.
From homlessadvice.com:
My employer supplies W-2s through the same intranet that stores our pay stubs. All docs are password locked.
Pay checks are direct deposited. If you want a hard copy of the W-2 you print it out. Between that and e-filing with direct deposit of my refund, my address won’t get used unless there’s a mistake.
According to the IRS website, a single person under 65 must have gross income of $12,000 or more before the 1040 is even required to be filed for 2018.
I worked as a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance preparer a number of years ago for mostly homeless people. Jasmine’s post covers the common answers. Some use the address address of a friend or relative. One used an address where they were evicted from. Perhaps they thought their mail might catch up to them someday, somehow. With direct deposit, getting mail from the IRS is less important than getting mail to the IRS. As Loach notes, some use PO Boxes, which are acceptable if the person doesn’t receive mail services at their home. When your home is a bridge underpass, that goes without saying. I recall that no one used their work address, perhaps because they didn’t want to tip off their employers that they were homeless.
First, recognize that you only pay penalties for failing to file a tax return if you owe the IRS money and below a certain income, you are exempt from the filing requirement altogether. If you are homeless with marginal income, you probably don’t have to file and many homeless people don’t. That’s a problem because many homeless people are owed tax refunds due either to income taxes withheld from jobs or refundable credits, like the earned income and child credits. Homeless people miss out on a lot of money each year because of the difficulty in filing tax returns. Not having an address is just one problem.
Exactly. Here is a link from the IRS on the VITA program which doesn’t focus exclusively on homeless people. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/free-tax-return-preparation-for-you-by-volunteers
They are cheap to me and presumably you but not to homeless people. I wish this were a service every homeless person could get for free. For reference, where I live, the smallest P.O. Box is about $40 for three months. That’s meaningful to the truly destitute.
However, you’d have to file if you had taxes withheld and want your refund, right? (My wife and I were having this conversation a while back about our teenage grandson and whether he needed to file or not.)
Yes, of course, if you want a refund.
It is to the truly destitute. But it’s actually possible for someone to be homeless but not quite destitute - at least in expensive areas.This is an article about full time employees of NYC who are homeless - I’m sure some of them have a PO box.
That’s exactly right. The question is about homeless people. That can cover a wide range of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean the unemployable who are living on a heating grate or in a tent in the woods. There are many working homeless That don’t earn enough to pay for housing but still work. Many are shuffled between various temporary government housing arrangements. Motel 6 and other low end motel chains make a good portion of their money from the government. Those are the people and families that make enough to have PO boxes but don’t have enough money to have a permanent residence. They have jobs, probably a car, but make well below what they need to rent or buy a house. And they are the ones that benefit from filing taxes because they are probably owed money.
I’m not guessing here. I’m Talking about people that I’ve dealt with many times professionally.