You will receive an IRS notice stating that you have to pay once they realize they didn’t receive your payment. This IRS notice explains that if you are unable to pay, you have to contact them in order to set up an installment plan. If you don’t get around to contacting or paying them, you will continue to get IRS notices that gradually get more and more threatening until they send you a Letter 1058 or CP-90, the Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing. You really don’t want to get either of these notices from the IRS.

A Letter 1058/CP-90 will be your last IRS notice informing you that you must pay the amount you owe. If you don’t take action within 30 days, the IRS will. The IRS can and will take just about anything of yours that they want in order to pay off your debt. They can take your wages, bank balances, and sometimes other assets and will typically not stop until they have reached the amount you owe. They can even garnish your wages.

Businesses aren’t excluded from this, either. If your business failed to pay its taxes, you will also receive IRS notices. If you fail to pay, the IRS will come in and take whatever they want, including office furniture, and may even contact your clients and divert their payments. The IRS never rests once they start coming after you.

This is where Taxmasters comes in. If you found yourself in a situation where the IRS is coming after and harassing you, talk to us. We will defend you and make sure the IRS isn’t taking more money from you than they are entitled. If you have received your final IRS notice, the time to contact us is now! We will give you a free evaluation and let you know how we can help save resolve your tax problems. Remember, tax debt is only a symptom of the problem that caused it.

Don’t let this happen to you!

Major Fred Hackett returned from Iraq this past July after serving our country for a year in the National Guard. MAJ Hackett served as a Judge Advocate and Brigade Trial Counsel at COB Adder. He and TaxMasters’ CEO, Patrick Cox, coordinated a four day tour across Iraq which included exciting performances by musician Rick Trevino.

Hackett says, “Having Pat on the ground interacting with the soldiers was great. Even in Iraq, he was fielding tax questions.” He goes on to say,  “Coming home from deployment is always a challenge, but TaxMasters has exciting initiatives going on, including the launch of TaxMasters U. I am proud to resume my position with TaxMasters and help individuals and small business owners come to terms with their tax problems, regain compliance and find ways to pay the IRS what they can afford.”

Patrick Cox and everyone else at TaxMasters, the tax relief experts, are excited and honored to have MAJ Hackett back on our team and look forward to working with him again!

For more information, view the press release.

—–

If you have any tax relief questions, visit TaxMasters online! Also, be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to show your support!

Starting a small business in America is incredibly risky. New owners need the right business plan, a dedicated staff, and typically money from the bank. They must also be meticulous when it comes to their taxes. Because there is more room for error and dishonesty, businesses are audited at a much higher rate than individual taxpayers. At the end of these financial examinations, many new owners are saddled with tax debt.

Few new businesses can survive owing money to the bank and the IRS at the same time. It is, of course, important to pay both. With that said, IRS back taxes are arguably a more pressing concern because of the collection tools the government agency has access to. Depending on how the business is set up, the Internal Revenue Service may be able to use a tax levy to seize personal possessions, including homes, and then sell them at public auctions to reduce or eliminate tax debt.

Call Tax Masters now!

Without the right tax advice, a business that owes the IRS is probably not long for this world. The new owner may not only see her dreams dashed, but she may also lose her home if the IRS executes a tax levy to collect back taxes.  An experienced tax advisor may not be able to eliminate tax debt, but she will be able to open up a dialogue with the IRS. In short, there is a much better chance of preventing or lifting an existing tax levy with the help of a tax advisor.

Perhaps the IRS is hard up for cash, because it seems to us that this relatively new tool is antithetical to the Social Security program as it was originally intended. These benefits were meant to lift retired people out of debt, not to push them further into it by withholding retirement checks. But that is exactly what the IRS is doing with their procrustean collection programs.

By the Numbers

Ninety percent of Americans 65 and older receive Social Security checks. These payments represent about 41 percent of the income for senior citizens in America (source: Social Security Administration).  Once again, the IRS does not seem to care that elderly people depend on these checks. According to recent guidelines, people who receive more than $750 per month from Social Security and have an outstanding tax debt are fair game. The IRS has been authorized to withhold 15 percent of these benefits (source: Internal Revenue Service).

Call Tax Masters for tax help today!

Before the IRS begins the tax garnishment process, they must notify suspected tax debtors. However, we know for a fact that many Americans are hit with tax levies without proper notification. This is because the IRS does not actually have to hand-deliver the notice; they simply have to send it to the person’s last known address.

What can we do? Anyone who owes back taxes should contact an experienced tax advisor today. A talented tax advisor can help clients file all back taxes and will try to negotiate an affordable tax payment plan that includes manageable monthly installments.

What are back taxes?

More than twenty million Americans have fallen behind on their taxes. That is an astonishing statistic that is not likely to improve anytime soon. Tax debt has become as American as apple pie and citizens are ignoring IRS letters more than ever. The reason for this is simple. Americans are afraid of the IRS, especially if they can’t afford to pay what they IRS says they owe. Over the years, the powerful federal agency has gained a reputation for overriding obstinance. Stories abound of IRS agents refusing to deal squarely with people who owe them money. The popular notion is that the IRS would rather harass and intimidate taxpayers in a typically futile attempt to collect every penny.

When the IRS comes knocking, it is important to answer the door. The single most helpful piece of advice we can offer is that tax debt never gets better or goes away. It only ever gets worse. The IRS is like an annoying relative that will never forget the slightest insult or affront. When a taxpayer is in hoc to the IRS, the agency will come calling sooner or later. To make matters worse, tax debts always grow when they are ignored. Fines, penalties, and interest are added to back taxes when the IRS finally identifies a suspected tax debtor.

No matter the amount of the debt, tax advisors can help. Not only will they communicate directly with the IRS, but they will attempt to negotiate a favorable tax settlement.  These arrangements almost always include a payment plan for taxes that will allow a taxpayer to handle his bill with monthly installments.

Okay, it isn’t actually a monster, but the IRS does have the ability to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. Every year, when the calendar reaches April, adults across this great country start worrying about their tax returns. They tremble at the prospect of being audited. Though their fears may be exaggerated, they are not entirely unfounded. The IRS audits people every single day. In fact, more than one million taxpayers are subjected to an IRS audit each year. Because the federal government desperately needs to increase revenues in the wake of the Great Recession, audits are on the rise.

What is an IRS audit?

Most Americans panic when they receive a Notice of Intent to Audit from the IRS. But, as we mentioned, these missives are sent out to over one million people, and they do not constitute a legal accusation or a claim of wrongdoing.  With that said, an IRS audit gives the agency the right to examine your financial records with the tacit intent of detecting inconsistencies.

What happens next?

An IRS audit is serious business. It is always best to seek a tax representative to defend you in an audit before the IRS can make a final decision. Even with the best representation and depending on exactly what the IRS believes you did and the merits of their accusations, audits can lead to substantial tax debt.  The feared federal agency will use every means at its disposal to separate you from the money it believes you owe. Should you find yourself in this predicament, the best advice we can give you is to contact an experienced tax advisor today. Tax advisors can represent you in an IRS audit and can help you deal with any resulting tax debt. A quality tax advisor can put an end to IRS harassment by dealing with the IRS directly, on your behalf.

Once an audit has been confirmed, tax advisors will review your financial records and if everything is in order, they will attempt to negotiate a favorable settlement.  This often involves an affordable payment plan that will help you eliminate your tax debt over time.

The percentage of small firms that are audited is near an all-time high. In 2010, 4.7 percent of sole proprietors that made between one and two hundred thousand dollars a year were audited. That’s more than four times the national average for individual taxpayers. When asked to comment on this egregious discrepancy, IRS agents opined on the long-held belief that sole proprietors perennially underreport their income. That’s a very nice way of calling hundreds of thousands of small business owners tax cheats!

Tax Masters Can Help

As we mentioned, nearly one in twenty sole proprietors receive an audit notice each year. Audits are scary for several reasons. First and most importantly, the business owner who is audited often ends up owing back taxes.  But tax debt is only part of the story. The process itself is incredibly unpleasant. IRS agents can simply show up on the doorstep of a firm suspected of underreporting and ask to see all financial records. They can then go over them laboriously and if they find a single entry out of place, the owner will have to cut another check to the IRS. We like to say that a good auditor will look until he finds what he is looking for.

Tax advisors can help. They may not be able to erase tax debt, but an experienced tax advisor can negotiate a favorable settlement with the IRS. Oftentimes, these agreements involve a payment plan for taxes that lets most businesses owners pay down their tax debt without having to close up shop.

The IRS sends millions of collection letters out each year.  These missives are of varying degrees of seriousness, but one thing we can say for sure is that they should not be ignored.  The IRS is easily the most powerful collection agency on earth with an annual budget of 12 billion dollars. Not to mention the fact that it is a federal agency that does not play by the same rules as other collectors.

When it comes to collecting back taxes, the IRS can be downright nasty. The two most powerful tools IRS agents regularly use are tax liens and tax levies. A tax lien gives the agency a legal claim to personal property, and a tax levy gives them the right to actually seize and then sell it! The only surefire way to forestall these unpleasant actions is to file delinquent taxes as soon as possible.

The only problem, of course, is that most folks who owe back taxes cannot afford to pay them all at once. How can tax resolutions services like Tax Masters help? If you legitimately owe back taxes to the IRS, a tax advisor will not be able to make them disappear. But what he can do is help you negotiate a reasonable settlement that involves an IRS payment plan. These payment plans typically include monthly installments the taxpayer can afford and that will help him avoid tax levies and liens.

The single most dreaded IRS missive is the Notice of Examination. By its very definition, an audit is a careful examination of financial records or accounts to check their accuracy. An IRS audit is typically not a criminal accusation. In fact, it is not even that rare.

About 1.6 million people were audited in 2010, which is around 1.1 percent of all taxpayers. The reason the IRS audits so many Americans is because the IRS believes those people underpaid their taxes. That’s right! Add to that fact that nearly a third of all audits target Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) claims, and it’s clear the IRS is going after people they think are easily intimidated. The simple fact is that not everyone who is audited made a mistake or tried to cheat on their taxes. But a scary letter from the IRS is often enough to convince them to pay tax debt they may not even owe.

Call Tax Masters Today!

Every taxpayer who receives a Notice of Examination, or a notice indicating that the IRS has changed your tax return and assessed a greater tax liability, should contact an experienced tax advisor as soon as possible. Going through an audit without proper representation is financial suicide. IRS agents know the US Tax Code inside and out and they will use their knowledge to get you to pay every penny they believe you owe.

IRS harassment is quite common. If the world’s largest collection agency doesn’t get what they think you owe them, they can take the gloves off.  Levies can be used to garnish wages, empty or freeze bank accounts, and confiscate personal belongings. The IRS can even take and sell your property to satisfy a tax debt!

The vast majority of people who blindly accept IRS assumptions about their tax returns do so because they believe it doesn’t pay to fight. This does not necessarily mean that the IRS was right!  It simply means that the taxpayer did not take the time to contact an experienced tax advisor. If they had, they would have discovered that tax representation is an affordable service that can save accused tax debtors money. Before facing an IRS audit or trying to settle taxes, give Tax Masters a call and tell them about your tax problem. It never hurts to talk through a problem before running headlong into trying to fix it.

About Tax Masters

TaxMasters, Inc. now offers unmatched consumer protections for new TaxMasters clients, such as an 18-month refund policy and a two-phase industry-leading business model featuring pay-for-performance tax debt settlement services.

How does the federal government make money? Actually, they don’t. They just collect it with a little help from the IRS. The internal Revenue Service “collects” over 2 trillion dollars each year from American taxpayers, but apparently that isn’t enough. Because they are hard up for cash and taxpayers are their only revenue source, the IRS has been ordered to put the squeeze on them. One tool they use to accomplish this is the IRS audit.

In the last year alone, the IRS has increased the number of audits from 1.4 million to 1.58 million, an 8 percent rise. That might not seem like much, but it is part of a decade-long trend. Since 2001, the number of IRS audits has doubled!

Call Tax Masters Today

While it is true that only 1.1 percent of tax returns are audited, there is more than one way to get behind on taxes. Do you realize that over twenty million Americans owe back taxes to the IRS? One in every 15 people has tax debt.  These suspected debtors are subject to fines and penalties that only the IRS can implement. They can and will take money from bank accounts, garnish wages, and even seize and sell personal property to recover a tax debt.

Tax advisors can help. They will handle all communications with the IRS in an attempt to negotiate a favorable payment plan or even a tax debt settlement. These agreements almost always include a payment plan for taxes that lets the taxpayer pay down his tax debt in manageable monthly installments.