Your Joint Refund Went to Your Spouse's Student Loan

Published: August 11, 2026 · Reading time: 14 min

TL;DR: Two remedies, near-identical names, opposite directions. Injured spouse relief (Form 8379) is about a refund: the IRS or Treasury took a joint overpayment to pay a debt that is your spouse's alone, and you are asking for your share back. It relieves no tax whatsoever — you stay jointly liable for everything. Innocent spouse relief (§6015, Form 8857) is about the liability: you are asking to be released from tax that arose from their items, which pushes 100% of it onto them. §6015 has three doors — (b) traditional (needs an understatement, no knowledge or reason to know), (c) separation of liability (needs you to be divorced, legally separated, or out of the household 12 months, and §6015(g)(3) means it can never produce a refund), (f) equitable (the only one reaching an unpaid tax, not just a deficiency). (b) and (c) die 2 years after the first collection activity — a defined term that does not include a joint refund offset. (f) has no 2-year rule since Notice 2011-70, but §6015(f)(2) bounds it by §6502 or §6511. And what neither form ever does: Form 8379 never reduces a liability, and §6015 relief never refunds your withholding or estimated tax payments.

The corpus already covers the MFJ versus MFS decision — wider brackets, the Premium Tax Credit, the qualified joint venture election, and the one paragraph in it that mentions liability separation as a reason to consider filing separately.

That post is about a decision you make before you file.

This is about the position you are in after you filed jointly and something went wrong — and it is a worse position, because Publication 504 is blunt about the exit: "After the due date of your return, you and your spouse can't file separate returns if you previously filed a joint return." The joint return is not undoable. What exists instead are two statutory remedies whose names are so alike that people routinely file the wrong one.

The two remedies run in opposite directions

Read that table twice before touching either form. Almost every wasted filing in this area comes from reaching for the remedy whose name sounded right rather than the one whose mechanics match the problem.

Which problem do you actually have?

One question sorts it:

• The money is already gone. A refund you were counting on was taken and applied to a debt. → Form 8379, if the debt is your spouse's alone.
• The money is being demanded. A balance due, a CP2000, a notice of deficiency, a collection letter. → Form 8857, if the tax arose from your spouse's items.

And the trap in between: injured spouse relief only works against a debt you are not legally obligated to pay. If the offset went to a joint liability from another year — a year you both signed for — you owe that too, and there is no injured spouse claim to make. That situation needs §6015, not Form 8379. The Taxpayer Advocate Service states the boundary directly: you are not an injured spouse if you are seeking relief from understated tax due to your spouse's actions.

If you cannot tell whose debt took the money, the offset notice comes from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and its Treasury Offset Program call center is 800-304-3107.

Injured spouse: an allocation, not a relief

The mechanism underneath Form 8379 is refund offset. A joint overpayment is a single pot of money, and under §6402 it can be applied to a past-due obligation of either spouse. Publication 504 says it plainly: "The overpayment shown on your joint return may be used to pay the past-due amount of your spouse's debts."

The categories the instructions list are:

• Past-due federal tax
• Past-due state income tax
• State unemployment compensation debts
• Child support
• A federal nontax debt, such as a defaulted student loan

Form 8379 does not challenge any of that. It asks the IRS to work out which portion of the pot was attributable to you, and refund that portion.

The allocation is item by item, and it is not 50/50

The instructions state the governing principle: "To properly determine the amount of tax owed and overpayment due to each spouse, an allocation must be made as if each spouse filed a separate tax return instead of a joint return."

What that means line by line:

That last row is where a freelancer's outcome is actually decided, and it is worth quoting the instructions exactly: "If you can't agree, the estimated tax payments will be allocated according to the following formula. Each spouse's separate tax liability / Both separate tax liabilities × Estimated tax payments."

A W-2 spouse's withholding is unarguable — it is printed on a form with their name on it. A freelancer's quarterly estimated payments are not, unless the record shows whose money they were. The worked example below prices that difference at $3,098.36.

Deadlines, timing, and community property

The filing window is the ordinary §6511 refund period, and there is a wording difference between IRS sources worth knowing about rather than glossing over. The Form 8379 instructions phrase it as 3 years from the due date of the original return (including extensions), or 2 years from the date you paid the tax that was later offset, whichever is later. The IRS's injured spouse relief page and the Taxpayer Advocate phrase the first leg as 3 years from the date the return was filed — the §6511(a) formulation. In the common case of a timely-filed return the two produce the same date; if yours is a late-filed or long-past year, treat the earlier of the two readings as your deadline and get advice.

Processing is slow and the IRS publishes the numbers: about 8 weeks for a Form 8379 filed by itself after the joint return has been processed, about 11 weeks e-filed with the return, and about 14 weeks filed on paper with the return.

If you live in Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington or Wisconsin, the calculation changes shape entirely. The instructions state that in community property states overpayments are generally considered joint property and can be applied to obligations of either spouse, that "the IRS will use each state's rules to determine the amount, if any, that would be refundable to the injured spouse," and that under state community property laws 50% of a joint overpayment (except the earned income credit) is applied to non-federal tax debts — while state laws differ on how much can go to a federal tax debt. Nothing in the worked example below transfers to those nine states without checking state law.

Worked example 1: the offset, and the $3,098.36 that turned on a bank record

Maya is a freelance illustrator filing Schedule C. Owen is a W-2 hospital technician with a federal student loan in default, balance past due $9,400, referred to the Treasury Offset Program. They filed jointly.

The joint return:

Maya's allocated $9,400 is not a guess about brackets — its dominant component is mechanical. Her self-employment tax is $50,000 × 0.9235 = $46,175, and $46,175 × 0.153 = $7,064.78, which rounds to $7,065. The remaining $2,335 is the income tax the separate-return computation produces from her allocated items. Owen's $2,800 is likewise the output of that computation on his side. The two allocated shares sum to the joint total tax, which is the only property of them the rest of the arithmetic depends on.

The refund and the offset:

• Total payments $16,800 − total tax $12,200 = overpayment $4,600
• The Bureau of the Fiscal Service applies the entire $4,600 to Owen's defaulted loan
• Maya files Form 8379

The allocation, when Maya's estimated payments are documented as hers — paid from her business account, under her own SSN, with bank records to show it:

Maya recovers $4,100. Owen's $500 stays with the student loan; his $9,400 debt is reduced by $500 and is otherwise untouched.

Note what a fifty-fifty split would have produced: $4,600 ÷ 2 = $2,300. The real allocation gives her $1,800 more than half, because she funded most of the payments. The instinct that Form 8379 gets you "half your refund" would have had her under-claim by nearly two thousand dollars.

Now the same facts, with the payments made on a joint 1040-ES and the spouses unable to agree. The instructions' formula applies — each spouse's separate tax liability, over both separate tax liabilities, times the estimated payments:

• Maya: $9,400 ÷ $12,200 × $13,500 = $10,401.64
• Owen: $2,800 ÷ $12,200 × $13,500 = $3,098.36
• Check: $10,401.64 + $3,098.36 = $13,500.00 ✓

Maya's recovery falls from $4,100 to $1,001.64. The difference — $4,100.00 − $1,001.64 = $3,098.36 — is exactly the slice of her own estimated payments the formula hands to Owen's creditor.

Same income, same debt, same form. The only variable is whether the payment record shows whose money it was.

Innocent spouse: §6015 has three doors, and they are not interchangeable

Everything in this half runs off one background rule. A joint return creates joint and several liability — Publication 504: "Both you and your spouse may be held responsible, jointly and individually, for the tax and any interest or penalty due on your joint return." The IRS may collect the entire amount from either one of you, in any proportion it likes, regardless of who earned what.

§6015 is the exception. You request all three types on one Form 8857, covering as many years as you need, and the IRS considers each — so you do not have to diagnose the subsection correctly in advance. But you should understand them, because they buy very different things.

Three distinctions in that table earn their place, and each one is where a reader's assumption tends to be wrong.

Only (f) reaches an underpayment. §6015(b)(1)(B) requires "an understatement of tax" and §6015(c)(1) speaks of "any deficiency which is assessed" — both presuppose the return was wrong. If your joint return was entirely correct and the two of you simply could not pay the balance shown on it, there is no understatement and no deficiency, and (b) and (c) are closed. §6015(f)(1)(A) uses different words on purpose: "it is inequitable to hold the individual liable for any unpaid tax or any deficiency (or any portion of either)." Notice 2011-70 says the same thing in its background section — §6015(f) provides for equitable relief "from understatements and underpayments." For a freelancing couple whose Schedule C profit arrived without estimated payments behind it, the underpayment case is the common one, and (f) is the only door.

The (c) election can never give you money back. §6015(g)(3) is one sentence long and absolute. Pub 971 repeats it: "refunds are not permitted under separation of liability relief." If you have already paid part of the joint liability, (c) is forward-looking only — it caps what you can still be made to pay and returns nothing. That alone can make (b) or (f) the better ask on identical facts.

"Collection activity" is a defined term, and a joint refund offset is not one. Both 2-year clocks in §6015(b)(1)(E) and §6015(c)(3)(B) run from "the date the Secretary has begun collection activities." The Internal Revenue Manual lists what that means: "A section 6330 notice; an offset of an overpayment of the requesting spouse against a liability under section 6402; the filing of a suit by the United States against the requesting spouse for the collection of the joint tax liability; or the filing of a claim by the United States in a court proceeding in which the requesting spouse is a party." And it adds the exclusion that matters here: that offset category "does not include joint refund offsets." Publication 971 agrees, treating an ordinary notice and demand, and a joint refund offset without notice of relief rights, as not starting the clock. So the offset that sends you to Form 8379 does not, by itself, start your innocent spouse clock — but a levy notice, or an offset of a refund from a later separate return, does.

The (f) deadline: what Notice 2011-70 actually changed

This is the point most often stated wrongly, in both directions.

Originally, Treasury regulations imposed the same two-year deadline on §6015(f) requests, and three circuits upheld it — Lantz, 607 F.3d 479 (7th Cir. 2010); Mannella, 631 F.3d 115 (3d Cir. 2011); Jones, 642 F.3d 459 (4th Cir. 2011). Notice 2011-70, effective July 25, 2011, abandoned it anyway: individuals "will no longer be required to submit a request for equitable relief within two years of the IRS's first collection activity," and instead "[r]equests must be filed within the period of limitation on collection in section 6502 or, for any credit or refund of tax, within the period of limitation in section 6511."

The notice also closes the door on over-reading it: "It has no effect on the statutory two-year deadline to elect relief under section 6015(b) or (c)."

And that administrative position is now statutory. §6015(f)(2), headed Limitation, provides that a request may be made for a portion of a liability that:

(A) has not been paid, provided that such request is made before the expiration of the applicable period of limitation under section 6502, or (B) has been paid, provided that such request is made during the period in which the individual could submit a timely claim for refund or credit of such payment.

So the accurate sentence is: §6015(f) has no two-year deadline, and it is not open-ended. It lasts as long as the IRS can still collect from you — generally 10 years from assessment — or, for money already paid, as long as you could still claim it back.

Worked example 2: the Schedule C omission, allocated three ways

Devin is a freelance videographer. Aisha is a W-2 nurse. On their 2023 joint return, Devin left $54,000 of gross receipts off Schedule C — a 1099-K he never entered. Separately, Aisha claimed a $6,000 charitable deduction she could not substantiate. They divorced in 2025. In 2026 a notice of deficiency arrives.

What the notice proposes:

(The self-employment tax figure assumes their combined net earnings stayed under the 2023 Social Security wage base of $160,200, so the full 15.3% applies to the whole omission.)

Aisha files Form 8857. She is divorced, so the §6015(c) door is open.

Step 1 — pull out the separately treated tax. §6015(d)(2)(B) says a deficiency attributable to "any tax (other than tax imposed by section 1 or 55) required to be included with the joint return" is allocated to whichever spouse the item belongs to, and "shall not be taken into account under paragraph (1)." Self-employment tax is exactly that. The IRM confirms the mechanic: self-employment tax is "subtracted from the total deficiency to arrive at a figure that represents only income tax."

→ $7,630 goes wholly to Devin, and is removed from the ratio.

Step 2 — allocate the income tax by the §6015(d)(1) ratio. Items giving rise to the deficiency: Devin $54,000, Aisha $6,000, total $60,000 — a 90% / 10% split.

• Aisha: $12,900 × 0.10 = $1,290
• Devin: $12,900 × 0.90 = $11,610
• Check: $1,290 + $11,610 = $12,900 ✓

Step 3 — the penalty follows the tax it is imposed on.

• Aisha: 0.20 × $1,290 = $258
• Devin: 0.20 × ($11,610 + $7,630) = 0.20 × $19,240 = $3,848
• Check: $258 + $3,848 = $4,106 ✓

The result:

Under §6015(c), Aisha's liability "shall not exceed the portion of such deficiency properly allocable" to her — $1,548. She is relieved of $23,088.

How the other two doors compare on the same facts:

• §6015(b) relieves liability "to the extent such liability is attributable to" the understatement from Devin's erroneous items — the same $23,088, by a different route. She would not need to be divorced, but she would have to clear the harder knowledge test: not merely that she did not know, but that she had no reason to know. A spouse who saw the bank deposits, or who signed the return knowing the business had a banner year, loses on (b) and may still win on (c), where only actual knowledge counts and §6015(c)(3)(C) puts the burden on the IRS to demonstrate it.
• §6015(f) would be the fallback if she were neither divorced nor able to clear (b) — or if there were no deficiency at all, and the couple had simply reported everything correctly and never paid.
• Her own $6,000 item is hers under all three. No door in §6015 relieves you of tax attributable to your own erroneous items. The $1,548 is hers whichever way this goes.

And the number that is easy to miss: Devin's liability is not reduced to $23,088 by Aisha's relief. It stays at $24,636. Relief under §6015 is personal to the requesting spouse; joint and several liability leaves the non-requesting spouse exposed to the whole amount. What Aisha's success does is remove the IRS's second collection target.

That is precisely why the IRS must notify him, and why §6015(e)(4) requires the Tax Court to give him notice and the chance to become a party.

What each remedy does not do

The most expensive mistakes here are assumptions about coverage, not failures of eligibility.

Form 8379 does not:

• Relieve you of one cent of joint tax liability. You remain jointly and severally liable for the entire joint return. It is an allocation of a refund, nothing more
• Reduce your spouse's debt — their allocated share still goes to it
• Work against a joint debt. If you are legally obligated to pay the past-due amount, there is no injured spouse claim
• Split the refund 50/50 — see above; it can go either way, sharply
• Reach a private creditor. The Treasury Offset Program collects specified federal and state obligations, not a bank's judgment
• Let you undo the joint return. Pub 504: after the due date you cannot file separate returns if you previously filed jointly
• Work the same way in the nine community property states, where 50% rules and state law take over

§6015 relief does not:

• Refund your withholding or estimated tax payments. Publication 971 limits refunds to payments made with your own money, and treats withholding and estimated tax payments as made with the joint return — not refundable. This is the single most under-appreciated limit on innocent spouse relief
• Produce any refund at all under (c). §6015(g)(3), flatly
• Reduce what your spouse owes. It concentrates the balance on them
• Happen privately. Pub 971: "There are no exceptions, even for victims of spousal abuse or domestic violence" — though the IRS will not disclose your current name, address, phone numbers, employer, income or assets
• Relieve tax attributable to your own erroneous items
• Reach your business's own employment taxes or a trust fund recovery penalty. §6015 addresses the liability on the joint Form 1040 — including the self-employment tax reported on it — not separate business tax liabilities
• Stay available indefinitely. (b) and (c) close 2 years after collection activity; (f) is bounded by §6502 or §6511 under §6015(f)(2)

The §6015(e) petition right, and how it differs from the deficiency petition

If the IRS denies relief, §6015(e)(1)(A) gives you an independent route to the Tax Court. You may petition:

• At the earlier of the date the IRS mails its final determination by certified or registered mail, or the date 6 months after the request was filed; and
• Not later than the close of the 90th day after the determination was mailed

Two properties are worth naming. First, §6015(e)(1)(B) stays collection against you through that 90-day window and, if you petition, until the decision is final — and §6015(e)(1)(B)(ii) lets a court enjoin collection begun during it, notwithstanding the Anti-Injunction Act. Second, §6015(e)(7), added in 2019, fixes the standard: review is de novo, based on the administrative record "and any additional newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence."

Structurally this mirrors the 90-day deficiency petition under §6213, but it is a separate jurisdictional grant with its own trigger. The clock starts on the innocent-spouse determination, not on a notice of deficiency, and the Tax Court's own guidance lists a "notice of determination concerning a request for relief from joint and several liability" as its own petitionable notice — with the same $60 filing fee and the same DAWSON e-filing route described in that post.

When you need both, in sequence

They are not alternatives. A realistic sequence for a freelancer:

1. A joint return is filed. Later, the IRS assesses a deficiency from the Schedule C, or the balance due is never paid
2. Your next year's joint refund is offset against that joint liability → no injured spouse claim, because you owe it too
3. You file Form 8857 seeking relief from the part attributable to your ex-spouse's items
4. Relief is granted. The liability is now theirs
5. A later joint refund with a new spouse — or a refund offset against their separate debt — is a Form 8379 question, on entirely different facts

And the reverse order happens too: a joint refund is offset to your spouse's student loan (Form 8379), and the same examination that produced the audit correspondence eventually produces a deficiency (Form 8857). The forms do not compete; they answer different questions asked by different parts of the same mess.

What actually decides both cases

Neither remedy is decided by how sympathetic your story is. Both are decided by records — and, in a freelancer's household, by the same records.

• The injured spouse allocation turns on whose payments were whose. A 1040-ES paid from a business account under your own SSN, with the bank record to show it, is what keeps the instructions' agreement-based allocation from collapsing into the formula that cost Maya $3,098.36
• The innocent spouse case turns on what the Schedule C actually was. Whether there was an understatement at all, how large it was, which spouse's items it is attributable to, whether the §6662 penalty stands — all of it comes out of receipts, a mileage log and reconciled gross receipts
• And the reason to know test in §6015(b)(1)(C) is, in practice, a question about how visible the business's numbers were inside the marriage. A freelancer whose books are a shoebox is not just risking an audit — they are pre-loading their spouse's argument that nothing was knowable

Keep the records for at least the standard period. In this corner of the code they get read by two different people with opposite interests.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between innocent spouse relief and injured spouse relief?

They solve opposite problems and the similar names are the only thing they have in common. Injured spouse relief, claimed on Form 8379, is about a refund. You and your spouse are both liable for the joint tax, that liability is not in dispute, and the IRS or the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has taken the joint refund to pay a past-due debt that belongs to your spouse alone — a defaulted federal student loan, back child support, a state income tax bill, an old federal tax debt from before you married. Form 8379 asks the IRS to work out which part of that refund was yours and send it back. Publication 504 puts it in one sentence: an injured spouse uses Form 8379 to request an allocation of the tax overpayment attributed to each spouse, while an innocent spouse uses Form 8857 to request relief from joint liability. Innocent spouse relief under section 6015, requested on Form 8857, is about the liability itself. The IRS wants money from both of you because you signed a joint return, and you are asking to be released from the part of it that arose from your spouse's income, deductions or credits. One protects your money from their debt. The other protects you from their tax. If you are still liable and the money is already gone, you may need both, in that order.

Does Form 8379 get me half of the joint refund?

No, and assuming it does is the most common way freelancers are disappointed by the result. The Form 8379 instructions say the allocation is made as if each spouse had filed a separate return instead of a joint one, so your share is driven by your own tax attributes rather than by a split of the total. Each spouse's own income is allocated to them, self-employment tax is allocated to the spouse who earned the self-employment income, itemized deductions follow whoever incurred them, the basic standard deduction is divided in half, the child tax credit follows whoever would have claimed the qualifying child, and each spouse's withholding and payments are credited to them. Your share of the refund is then your payments minus your allocated tax. That can land far above half or far below it. A freelancer who overpaid estimated tax while a W-2 spouse was barely over-withheld can recover well over half; a freelancer whose estimated payments only just covered their own self-employment tax can recover very little, even from a large joint refund. The one part you do not control is the earned income credit — the instructions tell you not to allocate it, because the IRS computes that split itself based on each spouse's earned income.

Can I get innocent spouse relief if I am still married to my spouse?

Yes, under two of the three doors but not the third. Section 6015(b), traditional innocent spouse relief, has no marital-status condition at all — it asks whether there was an understatement of tax attributable to erroneous items of the other spouse, whether you did not know and had no reason to know of it when you signed, and whether it would be inequitable to hold you liable. Section 6015(f), equitable relief, likewise has no marital-status requirement in the statute, although whether you are still married is one of the facts weighed. Section 6015(c), the separation-of-liability election, is the one that gates on status: section 6015(c)(3)(A)(i) allows it only if, at the time the election is filed, you are no longer married to or are legally separated from the person you filed with, or you were not a member of the same household as that person at any time during the 12-month period ending on the date the election is filed. Being unhappily married is not enough. You file one Form 8857 and the IRS considers all three types, so you do not have to pick correctly in advance — but if you are still living with your spouse, the (c) election is simply not on the table and your case rests on (b) or (f).

Will the IRS tell my spouse that I filed Form 8857?

Yes, always, and Publication 971 states it without any softening: by law the IRS must contact your spouse or former spouse, and there are no exceptions, even for victims of spousal abuse or domestic violence. Section 6015(e)(4) requires the Tax Court to give the non-requesting spouse adequate notice and an opportunity to become a party to the proceeding, and the IRS's own process invites that spouse to participate and gives them appeal rights on the determination. This is structural rather than administrative: relief for you does not reduce what they owe, it concentrates the entire remaining balance on them, so they are given the chance to argue against it. What the IRS does not do is hand over your personal details. Publication 971 says the IRS will not disclose your personal information — your current name, address, phone numbers, or information about your employer, your income or your assets. If safety is the concern, that distinction is the one to understand before filing, and it is a reason to talk to a tax professional or a low-income taxpayer clinic first rather than to skip the form.

What is the deadline for innocent spouse relief, and does equitable relief really have no deadline?

Relief under section 6015(b) and section 6015(c) must be elected no later than 2 years after the date the IRS began collection activities against you, under sections 6015(b)(1)(E) and 6015(c)(3)(B), and collection activity is a defined term rather than any letter that arrives — the regulations and the Internal Revenue Manual list a section 6330 levy notice, an offset of your own overpayment against the joint liability, a suit filed by the United States against you, and a claim filed by the United States in a court proceeding where you are a party. A plain notice and demand does not start it, and neither does the offset of a joint refund. Equitable relief under section 6015(f) has no 2-year rule — Notice 2011-70 removed it in 2011 — but it is not open-ended either, and describing it as having no deadline is wrong. Section 6015(f)(2) now says a request may be made for a portion of a liability that has not been paid only before the section 6502 collection period expires, generally 10 years from assessment, and for a portion that has been paid only while you could still submit a timely claim for refund under section 6511. So the honest formulation is that the (b) and (c) doors close 2 years after collection starts, while the (f) door stays open for as long as the IRS can still collect from you or you could still claim a refund — whichever of those applies to your situation.

Authoritative References

• 26 U.S.C. §6015 — Relief from joint and several liability on joint return (Cornell LII)
• 26 U.S.C. §6015 — full text (Office of the Law Revision Counsel)
• IRS Publication 971 — Innocent Spouse Relief
• IRS Publication 504 — Divorced or Separated Individuals
• IRS — About Form 8857, Request for Innocent Spouse Relief
• IRS — About Form 8379, Injured Spouse Allocation
• IRS — Instructions for Form 8379
• IRS — Injured spouse relief
• IRS — Innocent spouse relief
• IRS Notice 2011-70 — Equitable Relief Under Section 6015(f)
• Rev. Proc. 2013-34 — threshold conditions, streamlined determinations and the equitable-relief factors
• IRM 25.15.3 — Technical Provisions of IRC 6015
• Taxpayer Advocate Service — Injured Spouse
• United States Tax Court — Starting a case

Related reading: Married filing jointly vs separately for freelancers · Tax Court petition vs paying first and suing for a refund · What a CP2000 notice means · When you cannot pay the tax bill · The qualified joint venture election · How to amend Schedule C on Form 1040-X

Both Cases Are Decided by Records You Kept Years Earlier

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This guide is general education for U.S. freelancers and Schedule C filers in 2026. It is not personalized tax advice and it is emphatically not legal advice. The stakes here are unusually high: a §6015(c) election can never be converted into a refund, the 2-year clocks in §6015(b)(1)(E) and (c)(3)(B) cannot be extended, the IRS is required to contact your spouse or former spouse with no exception, and relief granted to one spouse leaves the entire remaining liability collectible from the other. Where IRS sources phrase a rule differently — as they do on the three-year leg of the Form 8379 deadline — this post says so rather than picking one. If a refund has been offset or a notice has arrived, take it to a CPA, an enrolled agent or a tax attorney; if cost is the obstacle, a Low Income Taxpayer Clinic handles exactly these cases.