Business
Man Asks Accountant for Partial Credit on New IRS Citizenship Question
A Des Moines taxpayer left the new Form 1040 citizenship checkbox blank, then asked if he could still get half credit. His preparer did not laugh.
Des Moines, IA — When Glen P. Mulberry opened the IRS’s draft 2026 Form 1040 and found a new yes-or-no question asking whether he and his spouse were U.S. citizens, nationals, or aliens lawfully authorized to work, he did what any careful student would do. He left it blank and asked for partial credit.
“I figured if I wasn’t sure, blank was safer than wrong,” Mulberry, 47, a warehouse supervisor, told The Prickled Herald outside Hearth & Ledger Tax Prep on Ingersoll Avenue. “I’ve been filing for twenty-three years. Nobody warned me there’d be a quiz.”
Mulberry was born about four miles from the tax office and once got a sunburn shaped like Iowa. None of that, he said, made him feel ready. “It doesn’t ask where I was born,” he said. “It asks if I’m sure. Those are two different questions, and I only studied for one.”
The draft form, which the IRS posted in September and stamped “DRAFT—NOT FOR FILING,” places the citizenship question in a new “Other Information” section near the top of page one, well before filers report wages, tips, or that one weird side hustle they keep meaning to stop. Mulberry said he spent forty minutes circling “yes,” then “no,” then drawing a small square of his own labeled “depends.”
A Question of Spouses
Then there was the second set of boxes, for a spouse on a joint return. Mulberry left that one blank too, out of respect. “I’m not going to answer for Denise,” he said. “That’s her business. She could be anything.”
Denise Mulberry, 45, a dental hygienist and his wife of nineteen years, confirmed she is a U.S. citizen and has been one “the entire time he has known me, including at our wedding, which was in Ankeny.” “He’ll order for me at Applebee’s without asking,” she said. “But this, suddenly, he needs to give me privacy.”
His preparer, Marlene Quigley, CPA, treated the situation with the gravity of a midterm. “Clients keep asking if there’s an answer key,” Quigley said. “There is not. There is also no extra credit for attaching a photocopy of your passport and a handwritten essay titled ‘Why I Love America in Five Paragraphs,’ though Mr. Mulberry tried both.”
Mulberry has since asked Quigley whether the question is graded on a curve and whether he can retake it in the spring “with a different proctor.” She answered no and “I am not a proctor.”
Experts Weigh In
Dr. Penny Erasure, director of the Midwest Institute for Form Anxiety, said the reaction is common. “The last time most adults answered a yes-or-no question in a box, a teacher was standing over them,” Erasure said. “You cannot put a checkbox that close to the top of a page and not expect people to look around for a clock.”
A survey by the institute found that 41 percent of Iowa filers believe the new question is “probably open-book,” 27 percent plan to answer it in pen “as a power move,” and 9 percent asked whether they could use the restroom before starting. The IRS processed roughly 161.5 million Form 1040 and 1040-SR returns last filing season, which Erasure called “a lot of people to tell to put their pencils down at once.”
Tax analysts say the question could help the government sort out who qualifies for certain refundable credits tightened under last year’s tax law. Mulberry said that explanation only confirmed his fear. “If they’re grading citizenship before income,” he said, “I’m bringing a No. 2 pencil next year and a sweatshirt that says ‘I’m doing my best.’”
Raymond Tubbs, a forklift operator on Mulberry’s shift, said the break room now hosts a Tuesday study group. “Glen made flashcards,” Tubbs said. “One side says ‘Are you a U.S. citizen?’ and the other side says ‘Yes.’ He still gets nervous flipping it over.”
On a neighborhood Facebook group, a post asking whether anyone had “heard if it’s multiple choice” drew 214 comments, including a tutoring offer from retired substitute teacher Bev Hallpass and eleven replies from Mulberry asking about her weekend availability.
Hearth & Ledger has since taped a notice to its front door that reads, in part: “The citizenship question is not a test. There is no time limit. Please stop asking Marlene if she can see your paper.”
As of press time, Mulberry had checked “yes,” underlined it twice, and asked Quigley whether he could still claim his cat as a dependent “for morale.” Quigley told him the cat would then have to answer the citizenship question too, and Mulberry has begun making it flashcards.
