A 21-year-old college student recently posted in a panic on Reddit’s r/personalfinance community, sharing that his father hadn’t filed taxes in over two decades. “My father has not paid taxes in at least 24 years, as long as my mother has known him,” the post begins.
The situation came to a head when the family received a letter from the IRS claiming the father owed nearly $150,000 in back taxes. The agency is preparing to issue a lien on the house. According to the post, the father flips houses for a living but is not reporting the income to the IRS. Instead, he’s depositing money into a student’s bank account: “I’m like his treasurer?” The original poster was written. “It makes me feel very uncomfortable now knowing that he hasn’t paid taxes for so long, and I feel like he’s using me to get away with it. [the government/IRS]?”
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The students said they were currently unemployed and struggling to find work. Meanwhile, his mother is chronically ill and financially dependent on his father, who receives Social Security. The parents are not legally married but have lived together for more than two decades.
The commenters were straightforward: the father is committing tax fraud, and the student is at risk of being seen as complicit. “You are not her treasurer, you are her tax evasion partner. (knowingly or otherwise),” one person wrote. Others warned that joint accounts could trigger the IRS to seize funds or trigger legal consequences.
“After their auditors trace, it’s easy for them with bank accounts,” one commenter, identified as a certified public accountant, added, “They’ll see your father evade taxes and make fraudulent transfers to a third party, which will trap you.”
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Many urged the student to immediately remove all joint bank and credit card accounts and open a new one in his own name at another bank. Others warned them to freeze their credit and check for signs of identity theft.
Some suspected that the father had already garnished his account, so that he could sneak the money through his child. “Make no mistake, your father knows exactly what he’s doing,” one person said. “He chose to put the money in your account because he knows the IRS will look at him.”
