Old credit card bills

I am writing about a subject I have never seen discussed in your columns. I wish to warn others about it so they will know what to expect if they take advantage of these offers and beware of what they will not be told up front.

Beware of old credit card bills you know have been written off, but somehow they manage to find you anyway. In my case, these bills were made in the '80s and early '90s and were written off by the company. They found me through my Social Security number, not my name, because I have been married several times.

They offered to let me pay the bills off at 50 percent of the actual bill. I did not want to do it, but my current spouse has never had a credit card and thought every bill should be paid. I did it to get him off my back.

We sent them the 50 percent value of the two bills from the same company and they sent us a "satisfied" notice. That was last April. That was the end of it until February of this year when after our taxes were sent in we got a Form 1099 in the mail for the "other 50 percent." The form tells you IRS has a copy of this also.

This made it necessary to file an Amendment Form 1040X reporting this as income. I was told by a CPA friend to let my refund come back first because it takes 8-12 weeks for this 1040X form to get back to you. It is very important you do this.

This form is so much harder to fill out than the 1040A. I was unable to put all the numbers they wanted in it because before we got the unexpected Forms 1099, we were told by the IRS that we qualified for a new credit I knew nothing about. We banked the entire refund and are waiting until they tell us how much to send back to them, if any. I do my own taxes.

One tax preparer place wanted $160 to do this form. That did not count the extra tax amount I figured out myself we owed. I did mail it in with lots of question marks in place of numbers. I had to write a letter telling them why they were there and to please send me a copy of the form with all the proper numbers in it.

The same deal is probably true for those companies you see on TV offering to let you pay less than what you owe when you owe huge dollar amounts to credit card companies. They don't tell you that the amount you do not have to pay will become income the tax year you pay it.

I am only trying to save others the huge headache my simple taxes became this year.

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Avon Park