How This Grad Student Fellow Resolved an Expensive Tax Bill in His Favor

Personal Finance for PhDs

In this episode, Emily interviews Matty Dowd, a sixth-year PhD student in history at Princeton. Matty openly shares with us the tax horror story he lived for most of 2021 and into 2022. In 2018 and 2019, Matty reported his fellowship income as "other income" on his tax returns, which caused the IRS to mistakenly think that he owed self-employment tax. To compound the issue, the IRS's snail mail communications never reached him. By the time Matty realized what was going on, the IRS thought he owed $16,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. Matty reached out to multiple sources to help him resolve this, but ultimately used Emily's workshop, How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), to explain to the IRS what had gone awry and have the issue resolved in his favor. It's a harrowing story with a happy ending! You won't want to miss Matty's ending thoughts on the most effective way to approach tax and financial education.