The line said the issue began in 2016, and the year it gave me was 2021. I read it again because those were years when my husband had told me everything was fine and had handed me every return to sign. The letter said the IRS had found discrepancies between the income we reported and information submitted by a company connected to my husband’s business. I didn’t understand most of the numbers, but I understood one sentence: “You may be personally responsible for the outstanding balance.” I put the letter down and called the number printed on it instead of calling my husband.
The IRS representative confirmed that there had been amended returns filed under my name that I had never seen. Some of the deductions were connected to expenses I knew nothing about, and several deposits had been reported differently from the way my husband had explained them to me. I asked whether my signature appeared on the original filings, and she said yes. Then I asked whether the signatures matched the amended documents. There was a pause before she said, “Ma’am, that’s something your attorney needs to see.” I suddenly remembered all those years of signing wherever he pointed without reading a single page.
That evening, I went through the old tax folders while my husband was out. I found one return from 2016 that he’d told me was routine, but the signature page had been replaced with a photocopy. Behind it was the original page, and my signature wasn’t there. Instead, there was a handwritten note from our accountant saying “Client refused to sign until supporting documents are provided.” I had never seen that note before. Then I found the same notation on three more returns, and all of them were followed by amended filings I had supposedly approved. That’s when I realized my husband hadn’t just been “handling” our taxes—he’d been signing for me after I stopped asking questions.
