IR-2012-53, May 21, 2012 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced another expansion of its “Fresh Start” initiative by offeringmore flexible terms to its Offer in Compromise (OIC) program that will enable some of the most financially distressed taxpayers to clear up their tax problems and in many cases more quickly than in the [...]

Eva Rosenberg of SmartMoney recently wrote about why you should avoid tax relief firms like Roni Deutch, Tax Masters and J.K. Harris and those unamed scammers (they just have 800 numbers because they don’t want you to know who they are because then you can do some research about them and discover the record of grievances [...]

One of the questions taxpayers with delinquent tax debts ask us most frequently is “can the IRS take my house?” The bad news is that the IRS can indeed take your house. The good news is that it’s not easy for the government to take your house and, therefore, it does so only as a last resort. The IRS will [...]

If you can’t pay your tax debt in full, you will have to completely disclose your financial circumstances to the IRS. There is no way to avoid this disclosure requirement other than making full payment. A taxpayer’s financial information is provided on one or more of the following prescribed IRS forms: IRS Form Number Description [...]

Kate Smith of Kiplinger.com writes in Pennies on the Dollar Tax Relief Offers Should Be Scrutinized: Tax troubles keeping you up at night? Then you’ve no doubt seen your fair share of late-night TV pitches to settle your tax debts for less than you owe. Such “pennies on the dollar” come-ons, regardless of the source, [...]

In certain special cases the IRS will accept an Offer in Compromise where the taxpayer does not dispute the liability and appears to have enough assets and/or income to pay the debt in full. Effective Tax Administration Offers falling into this category are called Effective Tax Administration offers. Congress has authorized the IRS to accept [...]

The IRS will accept less than the full amount you owe if you can prove to it that there is doubt about the accuracy of the assessments against you. Doubt as to Liability Offers are Rare Offers in Compromise based on doubt as to liability are rare because the taxpayer has already been given several [...]

In the last month of the campaign Barack Obama and John McCain seemed to relish telling us that things are almost as bad as they were during the great depression. Setting aside whether it’s wise for a Presidential hopeful to tell the already frightened citizenry how horrible things are and how much worse they are [...]