This. The IRS will only come after you if they think you were deliberately lying. Mistakes are simply to be fixed even when they are doozies. (One year I ended up amending my previous year's return because I had managed to fat-finger an extra digit into a number. It didn't change my tax bill *that year* by a single penny so nothing looked off. It was only when I saw the huge amount of losses being carried forward that I realized something was off. I didn't get any sort of complaint from the IRS about that despite it being a 5-figure error.)

> IRS isn't trying to put you in jail, they just want you to file correctly.

A lot of people would live much easier lives if they believed this.

You can make a really half-assed filing and all they will ever do is send you an invoice for the difference.

In fact, you could simply not file your taxes ever and the IRS will eventually inform you of your actual tax burden, at which point you should probably pay accordingly. I've never gone beyond this point.

The IRS is one of the most reasonable divisions of the government to get in a fight with, and there are insane amounts of protections built in for people who honestly believe they’re filing correctly. My dad even had them inform him of a filing error and included the additional much larger return he was due.

What you hear about and what they WILL get you for is deliberate fraud.