Aaron from Colorado Springs has been living a nightmare for three years. After working for the same company for 27 years, he discovered that his former employer had somehow tied his Social Security number to their Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) account.
The result? The IRS claims he owes over $180,000 in back federal taxes. Colorado’s Department of Revenue says he owes another $13,000.
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Lawyer Up Immediately
Aaron, who now makes about $130,000 a year, recently told personal finance experts Dave Ramsey and Jade Warshaw on “The Ramsey Show” that he had repeatedly reached out to his former employer to get the issue fixed, but nothing had been done. This week, he received word that his wages were about to be garnished.
Ramsey snapped. “Dude, you need to hire an attorney,” he told Aaron. “You should have called them before you called us.”
Aaron said he had contacted a tax attorney six months earlier, but the $6,000 fee scared him off. Ramsey jumped on that: “You can't afford not to do it. Colorado's getting ready to take $6,000 out of your butt any minute.”
He continued, “You just said the IRS is competent. That's hilarious. The IRS is going to help you? Come on, man. Really?”
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Ramsey encouraged Aaron to either reconnect with that attorney or go through the Ramsey Solutions tax pro network to find someone local who could fight the claim. “You need legal representation by the close of business today,” he said.
The main problem is that Aaron is treating the situation like it will fix itself. Ramsey pushed him hard to shift his mindset.
“You need to be the hero of the story, not the victim,” he said. “You hire an attorney who gets excited about this. Not one who's like, ‘I don't know what we're going to do.’ If that's the attorney, fire them before you hire them.”
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Ramsey said that if something similar happened at his company, he would have been deeply embarrassed and would have corrected the mistake immediately, likely firing someone in the process.
Aaron admitted the stress had weighed on him for years. Ramsey responded, “You need to be free from this. And the only one who's going to set you free is you with action.”
In his final push, Ramsey told Aaron to stop hiding from the problem: “When you know something's wrong and you kick it under the rug, you know what you get? Lumpy rug.”
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