To most people, the idea that they might need help going up against the Internal Revenue Service is not a foreign concept.

There is quite a lot of angst, in general, on the part of individual tax filers who often don’t fully understand the process, or feel that the system is rigged against them from the beginning. There is also the perception that the IRS is an unpredictable agency, that it could do just about anything at any given time.

So people turn to professionals who can help explain how the IRS works, and why, and what it means for them.

Think about these types of following situations that might happen to an individual tax filer, and you’ll see why we are such a valued service in our community.

Letters and Notices

As law enforcement often points out to scan victims, the IRS does not contact people by phone. The agency instead chooses a letter or notice approach, and contacts filers for audits and other follow-up through U.S. mail. That makes sense in that the IRS is using another federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service, and doing something that’s similar to what a process server does to serve papers. In other words, there is more of a chain of communication for tax enforcement.

However, people aren’t used to reading these letters and notices and they may often get confused

That’s when they lean on a professional for IRS representation!

Back Taxes

When it comes to back taxes, the million dollar question is: how much do I owe?

With an arcane system of IRS penalties and interest, along with quite a bit of ambiguity in the average tax filing, this number can be hard to pin down! So people need help…

Asset Seizure

A more concrete example of IRS enforcement action is where the agency takes someone’s asset. Suddenly, your boat is in the custody of the federal government. Or perhaps one or more of your properties is being seized.

This is a very visceral and emotional process that leads people to immediately seek representation in working with the federal agency – to resolve any issues, and hopefully get you stuff back.

Wage Levy

For a lot of individual tax filers who don’t have fancy assets like yachts, enforcement often comes in the form of a levy on wages or income

In other language, this is called garnishment, although some filers complaining of their lot might call it something else, like “garnshee” levies.

In any case, they again see the concrete example in their paycheck, where the federal government actually reached in and took money out, in order to fulfill a past due tax bill.

For all of the above situations and much more, turn to Oak Tax Management, an accounting firm that has your best interests at heart. We’ll help you to identify what’s going on and consult on how to deal with that, which is a great source of relief to our customers!