Individuals, businesses, and specialty taxpayers (like tax exempt organizations, trusts, and estates) can run into one or more of these IRS and State tax problems:
- Audits, including mail, office and field examinations
- Underreporter Notices (CP2000, etc.)
- Penalties, for underpayment, late-filing, or return errors
- Collection, including lien and levy enforcement
- Late filing and nonfiling enforcement
- IRS Account Notices, for issues like tax identity theft, IRS discrepancies, and dependent issues
Business may some unique issues that they have because they file many different types of returns and have more transactions with the IRS. All have to deal with the IRS to understand and resolve their issue(s).
Every tax problem has one or more solutions. Which solution(s) you use depend on your situation. Tax-problem solving involves these critical steps:
- Understand your situation thoroughly: this includes understanding your specific facts as the IRS sees it. This includes knowing all of the problems you are facing as the IRS compliance rules usually require that you resolve all outstanding issues before you are in good standing. The issue may be related to your State taxes also.
- Know what options you have to resolve your situation: there may be several options and you may be able to use more than one option if the first selected option is not successful. It is important to understand the timeline and actions for each option.
- Follow a step-by-step plan and resolve your problem: this is usually the longest part of tax problems solving that possibly involves multiple complicated interactions with the IRS. It will also require that you monitor your situation with the IRS to ensure that adverse actions do not occur and you protect your appeal rights.
- Confirm the problem(s) is solved: final resolution can usually be verified by reviewing your IRS transcripts.
- Avoid future issues: you may have follow up steps that you need to complete each year (make estimated tax payments, installment payments, file timely, etc.) to stay in good standing and avoid having your prior IRS agreements from defaulting
We can help you with each step of this process. If you prefer, we can interview the IRS and review your IRS records (called IRS Transcripts) and provide you a full consultation of your situation and your options (the first two steps). You can decide to resolve the situation yourself or get us to help with the remaining resolution steps.
