ByKelly Phillips Erb,
Forbes Staff.
Every tax season, I hear the same thing: There has to be a trick. A faster way to file. A magic move that gets your refund sooner. A loophole the IRS doesn’t want you to know about. Social media is full of them, and so are group chats, bar conversations, and well-meaning advice from friends who swear they’ve cracked the code.
The truth is, there are ways to make tax season smoother, but most of them aren’t secrets, and none of them come from viral videos or internet hacks. This year especially, with major changes to the tax law thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and an IRS operating with fewer people and bigger backlogs, the margin for error is thinner than usual. One wrong move can slow everything down, and there’s no easy undo button.
So instead of chasing shortcuts, I decided to go straight to the source. For some perspective, I turned to someone who is very familiar with the inner workings of the agency, Terry Lemons. Terry spent more than 25 years at the IRS, overseeing the agency’s communications operations for over 17 years before retiring earlier this year. Here’s what he has to say:
