Why do You Need Previous Year AGI When Filing Your Income Taxes? The Truth Lies in Identity Verification

In today’s blog post, we look at some more tax information, and will answer the question of why do you need previous year AGI in order to properly file your income taxes. For starters, there are some additional deductions that you may be able to get on your tax return if your Adjusted Gross income falls within certain limits, but mainly, it is used for verifying identity and to prevent against identity theft, in that if you can provide the Adjusted Gross Income from your prior years tax return, then there is a pretty good chance that it is actually you filing the return. I’ll keep this post rather short,  for no other reason than writing more than 600 words on Adjusted Gross Income would be painfully boring, and will explain other things you can do with your AGI, how you can reduce this to lower your taxable income, and also why this is important on your main tax return. In short, I’ll ask why do you need previous year AGI when filing your income taxes, and will walk you through the gist of just about everything that you’ll likely need to know on the subject. For more information,  read on or subscribe to our blog for additional details and information.

Other issues that I’ll attempt to cover in this blog post include:

The most common tax forms filed in the United StatesWhy do you need previous year AGI?

When to use Schedule C on your tax return

Why I like Taxslayer as a software better than Turbotax

Why Taxslayer is cheapest

What above the line deductions are

how an HSA contribution can contribute to AGI

Tax

Finance

Stocks

Investing Taxes

And a whole lot more, read on or subscribe to our blog for additional details and information.

Why do you need Previous Year AGI When Filing your Income Taxes?

So for starters, you’ll need your previous year AGI when filing your income taxes primarily for the purpose of identity verification. The Internal Revenue Service, as well as their patterning tax software companies, like Intuit Turbotax, like H and R Block and like Taxslayer, all have a significant stake in making sure that it is actually you who is filing your tax return, both for the purposes of legality and money. With this in mind, they have adopted a decently advanced strategy for identity verification, which is using the Adjusted Gross income on your prior years tax return, along with other factors, in order to make sure it is really you. I’m guessing that whoever put this in place had a thinking process somewhere along the lines of, if they have your last year’s tax return, it is probably actually the correct person filing.

Related Posts

Can I File My Taxes Without My AGI from Last Year?

You typically can only do this if you have not filed a tax return from last year. The reason being that it is fairly easy for you to have the IRS furnish you a copy of a prior year’s tax return by just filling out a simple form, either that or just pulling it from whatever tax software that you used to file. If I’m not mistaken, I believe there may even be a hotline that you can call to get your last year’s AGI from the IRS.

Why is TurboTax Asking for Last Year’s AGI?

Once again, Turbotax and any other tax softwares, including if you are paper filing for the year I believe, are asking for your last tax returns Adjusted Gross Income as a means of identity verification and as a way of making sure that it is actually you that is filing your tax return. And while this is probably not a perfect system, I do believe it is very good at scale at making sure that the only person who can file your tax return is you. So, in answering the question of why do you need previous year AGI when filing your personal income taxes, that’s pretty well the short and conclusive answer, to verify your identity.

Final Thoughts on Why You’ll Need Your Prior Years Adjusted Gross Income When Filing Your Taxes

So, what do you think of this blog post, and would you like to see more blog posts on Tax, Finance, or something else business related in the near future? I think I am going be getting back on the blogging train again, I had taken about two weeks off due to some work pressure in my Wealth Management job, but I finally have a break so now I am back at writing again! For more information, be sure to comment down below and to subscribe to our blog for additional details and information.

 

Cheers!

 

*Inflation Hedging.com

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