Can anyone really read enough IRS-get-egg-on-their-face stories? We can’t. So we enjoyed this piece from Forbes.
To sum up: Badri N. Abdi sounds like a very hard-working young man from a family in difficult financial straits. Guy works multiple jobs and goes to college — especially impressive since he manages to do it without a car in Southern California. He gives most of his pay to his mom for household expenses since he still lives there. What little is left after expenses for him he spends on his little sister.
When tax time rolls around, he claims the sister on his taxes as a dependent. Important to note: His mom doesn’t claim either him or the sister when she files. The IRS blows a fuse and says he’s about $3,332 short on his taxes — the dependency deduction, earned income credit and child tax credit.
So Abdi took the IRS to tax court. Where the IRS proceeded to lose the case.
Check out the details at Forbes here.