Huzzah.

Got a call yesterday from the tax auditor, they got everything and are closing our case. Pretty sure they took one look at it and it was obvious there was no way we had enough income to be required to file. The auditor was pretty happy, she got a quick case closure without really having to do anything other than look over our stuff.

I'm saving all the stuff for later, the IRS will probably want to know about that year at some point.

If readers are ever in a position where they don't file a tax return since they didn't make enough money to file [and really, you should always file unless you had absolutely no income at all or had no tax withholding at all--which was our situation] save all your bank statements for that year in case you ever have to show that you didn't meet the filing requirement. Makes things a lot easier---even though these days it can be pretty easy to retrieve old bank statements online, not all banks have online access to things from years ago, which was our situation.

It is also probably smart to save the check images [do any banks still send cancelled checks?] for mortgage payments or anything else like that you make during the year.
The only reason we tripped their trigger was because we paid our mortgage that year, and the lender reported the mortgage interest to the IRS and state tax people as they are required to do. They saw that we paid mortgage interest yet did not file a return, so of course they wondered if we had income and weren't reporting it.

One of the lesser known headaches of property ownership, I guess. Makes me want to go "off the grid" but my idea of "off the grid" is going more than a few hours without getting on the internet.