On the federal tax return you can only take the claim of right credit for your federal taxes. I agree that $16,000 sounds way too high. There will be a separate claim of right process for your state tax return. And you can’t use your federal tax return to claim a refund of Social Security and Medicare withholding, that goes on a different form that is filed separately.
Also note that you will not be able to e-file a federal tax return if you have no income. It will have to be printed, and mailed in.
I strongly urge that you have a professional and prepare your return next year, as I am concerned that there are facts that we are missing and $16,000 is probably way too high.
It is also important to understand that you cannot use the claim of right credit unless you can argue that you had a reasonable belief that you had an unrestricted right to the bonus income when you received it in 2019. In the case of a bonus that is contingent on you working a certain number of months to keep it, the IRS could argue that you knew when you received it that you did not have an unrestricted use of the money until after meeting the contingency period. If the IRS decides to audit to you, they could also look at your intentions in taking the job and then changing jobs before the end of the contingency period. If there is any way that they could look at the situation and determine that you knew or should have known that you did not have an unrestricted right to this money, they may take the credit away from you.
The other way to recover taxes on a wage repayment is with a special itemized deduction, and this does not require that you had an unrestricted right to the money, but it would require that you had other income and deductions large enough to make the itemized deduction pay off. It sounds like you won’t have income for 2020? I strongly recommend professional assistance when you prepare your claim of right on your 2020 tax return.
