I know a lot of people who say that if the IRS owes them money that they don’t file their taxes. Some of these folks are owed literally hundreds, even thousands of dollars. I can’t comprehend why they wouldn’t want their money, but from an accounting perspective it’s still a bad idea not to file yearly and on time.

One fact is that if you’re sure you don’t owe taxes, you’re exempt from filing by the yearly deadline. The magic word there is “sure”. If you file later in the year or the next year and they calculate that you indeed owed something, you’ll not only earn a penalty but it’ll be calculated monthly for every month you were delinquent. The rate won’t be the same each month either; the balance will compound like a credit card.
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