Back Taxes Help – Secrets of the IRS

Does the IRS want you to make a full payment of back taxes or are they demanding that you agree to a payment plan that is more than you can afford? It happens more often than you may imagine. Don’t hide from the IRS or fall into the trap of talking to the International Revenue Service without professional representation.

Many taxpayers contact the IRS themselves trying to negotiate a monthly payment plan, but don’t realize that doing so could cause more problems. When you begin speaking to the IRS, they will ask personal and detailed questions about your income, employment, vehicles, banking information, rent or mortgage payments, and so on.

IRS employees are trained to get as much information from you as possible to use against you later. This information will serve as a road map to help the IRS back taxes team decide where and when they want to levy, seize or place liens against your various assets. An IRS Collection Officer may want you to commit to a payment that you can’t afford. However, if you don’t agree to their plan, the IRS now possesses all the information necessary to go after your wages, bank account, house, car and other valuable assets.

The IRS Manual says that if you agree to a higher monthly payment amount disregarding the National Standards, they are not required to inform you of any alternative programs that might be beneficial. This may sound unbelievable, but it’s true. National Standards were put into effect by Congress in 1998 to protect taxpayers like you from the heavy-handed tactics of the IRS. The regulations state that a taxpayer who enters a payment plan with the IRS is allowed a certain allowance for food, clothing, housing, transportation and medical expenses. These allowances are used as part of a complicated analysis designed to create an “appropriate” monthly payment amount when you file back taxes.

Don’t despair! Federal Tax Professionals is extremely familiar with all the strategies to efficiently resolve your back tax problem.

• Non-collectible 

Being declared non-collectible is a procedure that Federal Tax Professionals has taken advantage of for many years now. If you’re declared non-collectible, you’ll stop being hounded for IRS back taxes.

National Standards will again be considered. If you have no disposable income, the IRS must declare you as non-collectible and will stop any further collections for approximately 1 to 2 years. The IRS will review your subsequent tax returns to determine if your income has increased. If so, they will consider resuming collection actions. Being declared non-collectible allows you the ability to get back on your feet financially.

• Payment Plan 

A Payment Plan is an agreed upon monthly settlement between you and the IRS. The amount you pay every month is determined by incorporating the National Standards allowances for food, housing, clothing, medical and transportation expenses into a complicated mathematical formula. From our experience, we know that the National Standards rarely have to be used in the first year, allowing us to use your actual expenses to come up with a lower monthly payment. Again, this is not something that the IRS will inform you of or assist you with. This is another reason why it’s essential that you obtain the professional help of Federal Tax Professionals.

• Offer in Compromise 

An offer in compromise is an offer to settle your debt to the IRS for less than what you owe. This doesn’t mean you can simply offer the IRS 10 cents on the dollar. Federal Tax Professionals uses a mathematical formula to determine your net monthly income and equity in assets to come up with the minimum acceptable offer amount. The Offer in Compromise Program is very complicated and cumbersome. After all, the IRS would rather collect all the taxes you owe, rather than agree to take a lesser amount. Knowing this, we spend considerable time and effort reviewing your unique financial situation to determine whether an Offer in Compromise is the right solution for you.

• Abatement of Penalties 

Requesting an Abatement of Penalties is a method we use to reduce the amount of money you owe the IRS. In many cases, 30-40% of the taxes consist of penalties and interest compounded on top of the penalties. Our elimination or great reduction of these penalties gives us the ability to negotiate with the IRS for a much better settlement.

Stopping the IRS’s Aggressive Collection Division

We know how to deal with even the most aggressive Collection officers. At Federal Tax Professionals, we use two main forms of appealing IRS enforced collection actions: a CDP Appeal and a CAP Appeal.

• CDP Appeal 

A CDP appeal must be filed within 30 days of final notice of intent to levy. This allows a Senior Technical Adviser within the IRS to review the case before it’s forwarded to Appeals. In other words, your case will no longer belong to an aggressive Collection Officer. Rather, it will be given to experienced IRS employees who are willing to resolve the matter.

If perhaps you’ve failed to timely file a CDP appeal, you have the right to file a CAP appeal.

• CAP Appeal 

A CAP appeal is rarely considered by the IRS. In fact, many IRS Collection officers don’t even know what a CAP appeal is. Here at Federal Tax Professionals, we often use this as an effective strategy against the IRS. Immediately, we file a CAP appeal if the IRS hasn’t filed a wage garnishment or levy against you. This immediately takes the case out of the hands of the Collection officer and puts it into the hands of a Technical Adviser before being forwarded to Appeals. Doing so is smart, as a Technical Adviser is someone who has been with the IRS for several years. He or she will approach things in a professional manner, following the IRS’s required procedures. Our CAP appeal also puts the brakes on a Collection officer instituting wage garnishments and levies against your social security and payroll.

The crucial part of filing any of these appeals is that you must first be in full compliance with the IRS, meaning that you have filed all required tax returns. Federal Tax Professionals can prepare your unfiled tax returns, file the necessary appeal to stop the IRS Collection, and get your case resolved quickly.