Tax return changed to charge 33% of income?
My partner and I are in a domestic partnership in CA (first year of this) so we had to submit paper forms for everything because of CA's shared property rules—equaling out to ~$44,500 AGI each this year. In the past we've done e-file and had no problem, but this year we both got letters saying we owe a bunch of money. I apparently owe about ~$400 which is a pain, but not going to ruin me. My partner, however, got a CP11 letter saying he owes almost $15,000: a life ruining amount which we can't pay (yes, his employers withheld his taxes). He works at a grocery store, I work as a teacher...living in Southern California, neither of us make that much money and neither of us have any savings.
He tried calling the number on the notice (800-892-0922), but it kept directing him to automated options, none of which would let him contest the change. Eventually the IRS system told him that the office was too busy and to call back later. I feel some level of guilt because I filed most of this myself using TurboTax (which was a nightmare), which said we didn't owe anything, and now going back through everything I see that TurboTax left the standard deduction lines empty (which is what the IRS letter cites as the main issue). I should have checked more closely, so definitely my fault, but we were up on the filing deadline so I just took the program at its word, printed, and mailed them in.
In any case, I really don't know what to do. The whole thing is so absurd and obviously incorrect, like being taxed $15k on $44k is crazy, but it doesn't seem like there's any way to contest it really. Does anyone know what we can do to fix this? Or what steps to take from here? Kinda freaking out, tbqh.