TL;DR-ish
Can I use any part of my situation to carry forward any amount of refund to next years? It seems so silly to have so much locked up in refunds and then owe penalties when they've had excess money from me the whole time. Any way that can work for me? I file 2020, 2021, 2022 in one go? Any of these bankruptcies work in my favor? Can I claim 100% loss and then if I get anything claim it as income?
My reading says 'no.' At the same time I can't believe I will probably owe penalties potentially for 2022 and can't apply any amount of refund from any year prior.
Situation
- 3 years behind on my taxes (max for refunds)
- Sadly my real excess withholdings and write offs have somewhat passed (2017-19)
- Mining crypto, I put all mined assets into Celsius; Celsius went bankrupt 2022, still ongoing
- Multiple (2) companies invested in pre-IPOs which went public and filed for bankruptcy, ongoing
My original plan: mining had a lot of write-offs, my intention was to take $3k or less of my refund aand apply the remainder to the following tax year. I found when filing my 2017 late, the IRS effectively said "no" giving me a check for the full refund. I waited to receive this before filing my 2018. I repeated. Same thing. 2019... same thing.
2020 is a wash. 2021 I actually had real income for mining. I had been using a site to determine my estimated income and hadn't sat down until filing these returns to get a good gauge on my actual income. Sadly the sites were off... by a lot. I'm thinking my than likely my additional withholding, requested in my W4s, in 2021 will offset this income despite not being able to carry forward any amount of refund to apply to later years.
I'm not expecting to see any refund applied to 2022. Since it hasn't worked so far. Again I'll try. Crypto did well for a bit in 2022 until the crash of LUNA. So my mined assets at Celsius apparently generated ~$10k declared in a 1099-MISC. Assets locked in bankruptcy, pennies on the dollar at some point.
The reason I got behind on my taxes: wasn't sure how to handle crypto; seems most accountants don't want to touch mining. Reason I stayed behind: waiting until the prior year is processed before filing the next. 2017 was submitted in 2020... took over a year to get back; 2018 to 7 months. 2019 was fast, so hopefully they are back on track.