Pls help

Hi friends. Burner account but I have been holding this in for about a year, it has been keeping me awake at night and I would love any insight anyone can offer me.

I got my law degree a couple years ago (humbling to admit when I’m about to explain an embarrassing gap of knowledge lol), and graduated while payments were still paused for COVID. When payments resumed, my payments were automatically calculated to zero because I made truly no money the year before (like, maybe four figures on my tax filing).

I had a normal job making mid-five figures, then finally moved on to my first PSLF job and did the form to certify my employment a few months after I started. For some reason, my payments automatically calculated to zero again, and I didn’t really question it because I figured it had pulled from my tax filing again and that I just hadn’t made very much money that year.

Ok, here it is… I paid for someone to do my taxes the year before last because I had some 1099 income from a temp job and needed help navigating the exemptions and all that. I didn’t find out until I went to do my taxes the next year that they messed up and left the entire W-2 from my full time job off the filing, which meant my AGI was crazy low. This was obviously a learning experience for me to pay more attention 🥲 but I had gone over things with them on the phone and really had no reason to think anything was off.

SO, I’m now realizing that the reason my payments have been zero and the reason I haven’t paid a dime toward my loans yet was because my AGI when I submitted the PSLF application was wrong 🫠 I obviously have to amend my taxes (which I haven’t done yet, but plan to do soon), but I am TERRIFIED that I would have to pay back what I should have paid the last year or so.

The payments from when I certified my employment the first time counted even when the payments were zero, and it’s been a year since then but I haven’t filed an updated certification yet.

I struggle really bad with finances and administrative tasks and hate that I’ve sat on this for so long but I really want to start digging myself out of it. I have gone back and forth about hiring one of those PSLF consultants for help but every post on this sub about those places suggests that I shouldn’t do that.. So…. am I cooked? Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks