Introductory Issue
Feb. 2015
P.O. Box 476
Schaller, IA 51053
Tom Buck, CPA
Donna Cavanaugh, EA
“Defending our fellow citizens against their government
by making sure the IRS obeys the rules.”
WHY ANOTHER TAX NEWSLETTER?
“The difference between stupidity and genius
is that genius has its limits.” - ALBERT EINSTEIN
Your
Here is what to expect when you make your initial contact
with Your IRS Problems Solved®:
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
You will provide some contact information
to our phone receptionist.

You might be requested to provide (via our
secure server) copies of certain documents
you have received from the IRS (or state
taxing authorities) so we can review them
before our phone consultation

A phone appointment will be set for a mutually
acceptable time in the next day or two

At the appointed time you will phone and be
provided a free initial conference with Tom
Buck, CPA. The purpose of this conference is
to discuss, in enough detail, your particular
problem with this single purpose in mind
– deciding whether we can help you
resolve your problem.
O: 888-364-4496
F: 888-364-4496
[email protected]
Over many years of helping people with IRS problems,
I have learned how to define a tax problem pretty quickly
and then determine what the outcome ought to be based
on our understanding of the tax law. Once we are confident
what the outcome should be, we do everything necessary
to make that outcome a reality.
It is important for you to know that there are some
cases we do NOT take because the case can’t be won and
we will not put the taxpayer in a worse position by taking
their money when we can’t offer any significant help. Our
goal is this —that we are able to get the relief the taxpayer
needs and, often, have the cost of our services paid for
by the savings we help create.
Greetings and welcome to the first issue of the
IRS Problems Solved® newsletter. Our purpose in writing
and disseminating this newsletter is to help our fellow
citizens get the best possible result when facing an IRS
problem. You have your best shot at a good outcome by
working with a firm that has been pretty much through it
all when it comes to dealing with IRS problems. Over
these next few months, we hope to demonstrate to you
that we are THE place to come for help with IRS problems.
There are a great many companies that try to sell similar
services, some good, many not so hot. Our best advice
when deciding who will have your trust to help resolve
your IRS problem is this: if the first voice you hear when
you respond to a sales pitch is that of a sales person rather
than a tax professional, run for your financial life. There
have been numerous high-profile companies over the past
few years that were happy to collect their substantial fee
(up front) and then fall short of producing the promised
result. Most of them have gone bankrupt – run out of
business by the IRS and by State Attorneys General.
Unfortunately (for these taxpayers who have been taken
in), we have had to try to straighten out messes caused by
these unscrupulous operators. In many cases, these victims
have not only paid substantial fees (for which they received
no real service), but IRS penalties and interest have
continued to run up the balances due. Sometimes, because
of a lack of responsiveness to IRS communications, the job
of resolving conflicts becomes much more time-consuming
and, thus, considerably more expensive to cure.
We become personally involved with our clients with
the intent of getting a complete resolution to the problem.
I tell all my clients that until you get the IRS off your back
and out of your life, you will never again have a financial
future. Getting the current problem solved is important,
but we also try to help our clients amend whatever caused
the initial problem so they don’t have to worry about
getting into the same jackpot in the future. Mark Twain
once said: “There is nothing to be gained from the second
kick of a mule.”
Each month we will include some “Stupid Tax Cheat”
stories, some pithy quotes, perhaps a joke or two and
probably a war story. I have been successfully handling
IRS problems for over thirty years. As you might imagine,
I have some stories to tell. We’ll also spend some time
each month giving you tips on how to respond to certain
IRS inquiries. We’ll also entertain questions submitted
by our readers.
Our purpose is to help you, and others you might
pass this information on to, to navigate the extremely
treacherous waters you are in when the IRS is after you.
We really do practice our motto: Defending our fellow
citizens against their government by making sure the
IRS obeys the rules.™
CAUTIONARY TALE – why you should carefully
consider NOT representing yourself or even
accompanying your representative in your tax audit.
“A husband foolishly began chatting up a revenue agent who had
begun an examination of his return. His bragging alerted the
auditor to a home sale that occurred in the year prior to the one
under audit. The agent ended up expanding the audit to include
the previous year, and found that the sale didn’t qualify for the
break that makes most home sale profits tax-free. As a result of
the taxpayer’s loose lips, he had to fork over more than $150,000
in additional tax, penalties and interest.”
I will NEVER allow my clients to speak with the IRS for
one very important reason: A tax audit is a most stressful
experience. It is human nature for the person being audited
to want to get on the good side of the auditor. All too
often, in the hope of making a friend of the IRS agent, a
gratuitous statement is made that could lead the agent
to look at items (or other years, as in the case cited
above) that would not have been examined were it not
for the additional information gained from the loose-lip
conversation. Unless your audit issues are very simple or if
you decide you are willing to accept whatever outcome the
auditor comes up with, please do yourselves a favor and let
your representative do ALL the communicating with the
IRS. Our clients find it comforting and reassuring that they
will not have any personal contact with the IRS once they
have chosen to have us represent them.
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EITC (Earned Income Tax
Credits), Child Tax Credits
and IRS Error Rates
IRS Levies and Liens
Dos and Don’ts
According to TIGTA (Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration) - the department tasked to oversee the IRS
and point out areas that need to be addressed or improved in 2003, the IRS over paid by some $10.5 billion dollars in these
child-related tax credits. In 2013, the improper payments rose
to $14.5 billion - this after the IRS has required much more in
the way of reporting (additional tax forms to be filed) and
questioning by tax preparers to be certain that the taxpayer
was eligible for EITC and for how much. Trust this – anytime
the IRS requires the filing of additional tax forms, the cost to
have your taxes prepared goes up – to say nothing of forcing
more and more citizens into arms of the paid preparer by
making the Tax Code even more complex than it already is. So
now we have all this extra work performed by others on behalf
of the IRS and they STILL give away the ranch? What a country.
Tax professionals have long known that the IRS often makes
mistakes in applying the rules. When they pay out billions of
dollars to undeserving recipients, we all lose because the U.S.
Treasury (all of us taxpayers) is the victim. However, we also know that the IRS often sends letters to taxpayers informing that
additional taxes are owed. Some estimates suggest that this correspondence is in error as much as 50-70 percent of the time.
What you need to take from this information is this: Don’t automatically pay any additional amounts the IRS says you owe until
you carefully research the issue. If you disagree, you or your representative would be well-advised to contest the IRS’s position.
Sometimes this is a fairly simple task; other times it might require significant effort to win your point. Like many other decisions
in life, it is well to weigh the costs and benefits. If the additional tax the IRS says you owe is quite small, you might decide to just
pay it and save the bother and expense of presenting your case.
Comments and Suggestions
Visit our website for even more tax-related content!
Your comments and suggestions on ways that we can make this
newsletter more useful to you are welcome. We also invite you to
visit us at: www.yourirsproblemssolved.com. Our website is updated
regularly with fresh information on a myriad of tax topics. If you leave
your email address, you will be notified whenever we post new material.
Space within this newsletter is a bit limited sometimes there will
be topics which require more space than we can devote to them here.
In that case, we will try to give a short, executive summary and invite
you to the website for a more complete treatment.
As a final note, if you have acquired a physical copy of this newsletter
but would rather have it emailed to you, simply send your request to
[email protected]. To opt out of receiving the newsletter
entirely, send an email to the same address.
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For when your banker or employer tells you they have
to send your money to the IRS:
Do open all mail you receive from the IRS - do
this and you will never get that nasty notification
that the IRS is taking your bank balance or part
of every paycheck.
Do open all mail from the IRS (this is important
enough to repeat) - IRS will make numerous
attempts by mail to get your attention. These
are opportunities to learn exactly what the IRS
is up to. HOWEVER, navigating these IRS waters
can be problematic even for experienced
professionals - get help.
Do contact Your IRS Problems Solved® for a free
consultation to determine if we can help you. If
you have no options, we will tell you that the IRS
has you by the short hairs and not take money
from you if we can't help. In most cases there is at
least one solution that will pay for itself. We take
you through the entire process and don't quit until
we get what we told you the result would be.
Audit Dos and Don’ts
For when you get an IRS letter notifying that you have been chosen for an IRS audit:
Do open all mail from the IRS - ignore it at your eventual peril!
Here’s one we can all agree on, left or right,
democrat or republican. We need to get control
of the bureaucracy. It has always, in history,
finally been a bloated and overly powerful
bureaucracy that takes a country down the drain.
Undercover with the IRS
Find out what they’ve been hiding from you.
The New York Times reports that the IRS is using
dozens of undercover agents to pursue suspected
tax evaders, with officers posing as tax preparers,
accountants, drug dealers or yacht buyers. José
Marrero, a former IRS supervisor in Miami, said he
knew of situations in which tax investigators needed
to assume the identity of doctors to gain the trust
of a medical professional and develop evidence
that is tightly held. An IRS spokesman said that
undercover investigators are permitted to pose as
attorneys, clergymen, journalists and the like,
provided they have permission from senior officials.
Don't respond to the IRS without seeking the advice of a tax professional first - only exception
is to inform the auditor that you have appointed a Power-of-Attorney representative.
Don't meet with the IRS personally - in almost every case, we do not ever allow our clients
to speak with the IRS, even with us present.
Don't try this at home - the old adage that the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a
client holds true when the IRS is after you. Later I'll share my own IRS audit experience with
you. The first thing I did when I received my audit notice was to hire the best tax attorney I
could afford. You owe it to yourself to contact us first, so that we can guide you—before
you make a decision that could cost your dearly.
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