Hot Answer

Last year I didn’t have a job, but I lied to my mom and lead her to believe I did to get her off my back. I had just come out of a really hard personal devastation in my life, and I went into a depressed mode. I lived off of what I had saved up. I felt embarrassed and depressed about the situation, and my mom’s the type that isn’t understanding, and can really make a person feel much more depressed and stressed out, so I lied to keep her off me. I lived on my own, so it was easy.
Now it’s income tax time, and she’s been hounding me to give her the information so she can do the paper work. And I’m assuming she also gets some sort of benefit from having me listed as dependent, even though I’m really not anymore. I’m not sure what to do. I saw that she got a paper from Chase bank that looked like an account summary sheet with my name on it that said something about the income tax, listing $12 (compared to my sister’s $87 who worked about 3-4 months part time doing retail work). I don’t know where $12 came from. I now live with my boyfriend (and working + student), and I was thinking of telling her we just did our taxes together / online through turbotax.com (I have to file anyways, even if I didn’t work) … but if she gets some sort of tax rightoff, she probably needs my W2.
I know the logical answer is to tell her I didn’t work for a year, but if you knew my mom you’d know the nightmare it would bring. I wish I could just brush this embarrassing thing away and move on from it. File my taxes on my own like every other personal financial thing of mine that I handle. She’s not involved in my finances anyways. Maybe I can tell her I did a lot of freelance web design like I used to, and that’s why the bank summary / lack of W2 reflects no job?