Think taxes are definitely being included, would explain that sudden spike to $9000 in his expenses.
I agree, this is likely taxes and/or micro-transactions he's attempting to write off as a business expense. Both of which are wrong.
Taxes aren't a business expense, you only pay taxes on profits after expenses so they don't add to your "operating expenses". So if he's doing this, he'll be called out and this will push him into Chapter 13 by increasing his net income.
In fact, the chance of this is quite high. Did anyone see on his forms where he calls out the taxes he pays? I didn't, other than the $500/mo installment plan. So he doesn't pay any other taxes and yet he still has negative net income?
Remember he isn't paying any of his credit cards anymore, and he also isn't paying his CT condo either, and he still claims negative net income. So, just pure common sense says the numbers just can't be right.
Khet's $1,742 income is listed as "gross income, before all payroll deductions", and that would be before taxes are taken out. On the same form, Phil may be claiming his taxes as part of his operating expenses in order to reduce his income into Chapter 7 territory. We don't know his real operating expenses, but lets give him $1,500/mo for shits and giggles. That puts him at $7,700 in profit before taxes, and assuming 20%-25% taxes, about $1,730/mo in taxes he will owe.
Assuming he's adding this in to his "operating expenses", he would still be left with $6,000-$3,990=$2,010/mo that is unaccounted for in his business expenses. That's gotta be his micro-transactions.
That also means he's adding in somewhere between $1,700-$3,700/mo to his operating expenses on the 122A-1 form that are false. Even at $1,700/mo of bogus write-offs, his net household income increases to $89,000, far above the $78,823 median income requirement for Chapter 7.
He doing this just because he really doesn't want Chapter 13, because he knows he can't handle the payment plan.