IRS ADVISOR CHECKLIST WARNING

Do not assume your current accountant, IRS advisor, or relative can represent you adequately.

This is a highly specialized area. I know several CPA’s who are excellent accountants, but when it comes to representing their clients before the collection division of the IRS, they fail terribly. Apply the following  IRS advisor checklist to your current representative. It may save you a lot of money and headaches.

Joe Mastriano’s sites will help you weed out people who are scam artists, and others who fraudulently represent taxpayers.

This site can save you from crooked, fraudulent, scam, rip off, con artists, and their dishonest, illegal practices.

1. Reputation is important

Do internet searches under the name of the company you may want to hire, and put the word “scam” “fraud” or “rip-off” after the company name, (YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST DO THIS) or after the name of the actual representative who will be working on your case. Many so called ” IRS PROBLEM” solving companies are the subject of lawsuits and large amounts of consumer complaints. If they can’t give you referrals, hang up the phone FAST! Even though this is confidential work, if they can put testimonials on their web site, then those people should be willing to speak well of the company. As a CPA I can ethically give referrals, so why can’t they? If you are told that there will not be specific person assigned to your case or a group is assigned, run the other way. This is a way to hide their “lack of responsibility. “A team of $7.00 per hour accounting clerks will not benefit you. Be careful about references. Even bad accountants have a few people who are willing to say good things about them. Discuss exactly what you will be paying for, and what results you can expect with the person who will be actually working on the majority of your case. Do not let a sales “Rep” sign you up! This is professional legal representation not auto repair!

2. Credentials

Your representative must have at least one of three credentials. Either a CPA (certified public accountant), EA (enrolled agent), or attorney. However they must also possess the accounting, tax skills, and representation experience, necessary to be effective. Someone who has passed the CPA exam or the Enrolled Agents exam
will have shown that they have the technical ability. Many ex: IRS collection division employees are given the EA (enrolled agent) title when they leave the IRS, without HAVING TAKEN THE EXAM! I would not hire such a person or an attorney unless they can show you they have done a large volume of tax returns and representation cases, to overcome their not having passed the exam. Remember this must be true for the person who will be doing the actual case work and negotiations. There will always be a licensed person “supervising” the case, otherwise they won’t be able to negotiate in your behalf.
what I am saying, is that the person doing the tax work, filing out the IRS forms, being responsible for due dates, etc. must possess the above
credentials. Do not short change yourself!

3. Watch out for the common tricks

Statistics such as we did an offer in compromise for someone who owed $250,000 and settled for $3,000
can be misleading. Offers are based on the taxpayer’s assets and ability to pay. So if someone doesn’t have equity in assets, and no or very little income, the offer will settle for just a few dollars, with or without the representative’s help. A better statistic would be something like the following… The offer division wanted to include the accounts receivable, average balance in the bank account, and $20,000 for the inherited pile of junk (only worth $500) from “Uncle Louie”. I fought the caseworker and manager to exclude these values. They still wouldn’t budge. I researched each item; case history, tax code, employee manual etc., and filed an appeal.
I was then able to settle the case ON MY TERMS. Now that would be impressive! Beware of people who say that they will do your offer for pennies on a dollar. First of all, an offer is an agreement to settle for less than the full amount. Any accepted offer, since it would be for less than the total, would be for pennies on a dollar anyway. Maybe it would be 80 or 90 pennies, but still pennies on the dollar. The implication of course when someone says this, is that the offer will be for a “few” pennies. The IRS is currently cracking down on people who use this phony statement.

Other phony statements are guarantees that the company will work faster than anyone else, or that they can get your levy removed immediately, or that they offer a money back guarantee, or only an attorney can represent you effectively. They go on and on.

THESE ARE ALL GIMMICKS! Negotiated settlements are always at the IRS’s discretion. No representative has an unfair advantage over another. Nothing will take the place of Knowledge, experience, and quality work ethics!

Please hire an individual who has the knowledge, the experience, the credentials, and the dedication to still be there for you 8 months later when the IRS still has questions!

Another common approach is to make you think that if a representative has many titles and licenses, they are highly qualified, and therefore you should hire their company. I know at least one popular well educated ex IRS agent, who spends most of her time teaching classes and doing research. What good is someone’s credentials, experience, etc. if they will not be in the office every day personally working on their cases ? Can they respond immediately to the IRS’s and your phone calls? Are you willing to suffer the consequences of missed calls and deadlines. I wouldn’t. That’s usually when the levies and seizures happen!

Or if their web site have three approval stickers on it, or BBB stickers, then they want you to trust them. The Better Business Bureau only supports their own members. So if one of their members rips you off, and you the consumer ( non member ) complain, then your complaint will not be listed anywhere, and no one will ever know about it. So when you call the BBB to see if there are any complaints, you may be told that there are none, when in fact there have been 50 non member complaints! Many people find this out the hard way.

One pitfall not to get trapped in, is to judge a company based on how good the web site looks. Some of the top sites will list many helpful pages explaining a lot of IRS rules. They give you links to forms and solutions after playing with your emotions by first scaring you because of your IRS problem, and then providing the solution. First of all scare tactics are unprofessional and in bad taste. Second, all the extra stuff on the web page, including the links, are necessary for them to rank high up on the search engine. It’s NOT because they are a very knowledgeable IRS representation firm. The look of the web site usually has nothing to do about whether on not they will do a good job for you. Look through many listings to find the ones that look like the representative will meet the criteria outlined here. Please stay away from the big National firms that claimed to have helped thousands of people across the U.S. Don’t take my word for it, your own internet search should yield the complaints that exist.

Your judgment of character after meeting or speaking at length with the potential representative is of great value.

4. Assess their Experience

Ask your potential representative how many collection cases, tax returns, or offers have they done recently. Ask them to recall ones that went their way, and cases that went the IRS’s way, etc. They can discuss all of this if they don’t break confidentiality by not giving you the client’s names. The purpose of asking these questions is not to establish their track record, but to see if they do this often. There should be no hesitation to recall from yesterday, last week, today, various calls, meetings etc. they had with the IRS. If they can’t speak freely of the extensiveness of their casework, they probably don’t do very much of this type of work. Without the experience, you will fall prey to the collection officer forcing you to settle on their terms not yours.

How did your current representative do on our IRS advisor checklist?  Please hire an individual who has the knowledge, the experience, the credentials, and the dedication to still be there for you 8 months later when the IRS still has questions!

• If you are considering hiring us, call Joe Mastriano, CPA 713-774-4467.
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