The Position
A firm that does everything
does your IRS case between other things.
This is a structural difference rather than a claim about quality. It can be checked in about a minute by looking at any firm's service menu, including ours.
The short answer
Should I hire a tax-only firm or a general accounting firm?
Hire a general accounting firm if you need bookkeeping, payroll, financial statements, an audit, or ongoing business advisory alongside your tax work. A tax-only practice cannot provide any of that, and pretending otherwise would be a disservice.
Hire a tax-only firm when the tax analysis is the work: an IRS collection or examination matter, years of unfiled returns, a multi-entity return where the coordination is the difficulty, or planning where the whole value is in the tax outcome.
The difference is not effort or care. It is where a practice's repetitions accumulate. A firm whose week is divided across bookkeeping, payroll, compilations and returns handles fewer Collection Due Process requests in a year than a firm that does nothing else, and IRS procedure rewards repetition heavily.
What the service menu tells you
The most useful diagnostic is also the most boring one. Read a firm's list of services. If it includes QuickBooks setup, monthly bookkeeping, payroll processing and part-time CFO work alongside tax resolution, then tax resolution is one of six revenue lines competing for the same hours.
That is a legitimate business, and for many clients the right one, because a single relationship covering the books, the payroll and the return has real value. But it is a different proposition from a practice where every hour of the week goes into federal tax, and it is worth naming rather than leaving implicit.
| Tax-only practice | General accounting firm | |
|---|---|---|
| Service lines | Resolution, preparation, planning | Bookkeeping, payroll, compilations, advisory, tax |
| Where hours accumulate | Federal tax and IRS procedure | Spread across all lines, weighted to recurring work |
| Continuing education | Concentrated in taxation | Spread across accounting, audit, ethics and tax |
| Best for | IRS matters, complex returns, tax planning | A business needing books, payroll and a return in one place |
| Weakness | Cannot do your bookkeeping, payroll or financial statements | Resolution competes with recurring work for capacity, especially in season |
| Capacity in filing season | Tax work is the whole business, so it is resourced for it | Resolution deadlines compete with return deadlines and monthly closes |
Why IRS procedure specifically rewards specialisation
Some tax work generalises well. A straightforward return is a straightforward return. Collection and examination procedure does not generalise, for three reasons.
The deadlines are unforgiving and non-obvious
Thirty days from a Final Notice to request a Collection Due Process hearing. Thirty days from an examination report to protest to Appeals. Ninety days from a Notice of Deficiency to petition the Tax Court, with no extension available for any reason. These are not published prominently and none of them announce themselves. Missing one permanently removes an option that was free the day before, and recognising them on sight is a matter of having seen them many times. The notice sequence and its deadlines are here.
The standards are local, published, and updated
What the IRS will accept as a monthly payment turns on the Collection Financial Standards for your county, revised annually. Knowing that a King County housing allowance differs from a Snohomish County one, and knowing which categories the excess is disallowed against, is the difference between a proposal accepted and a proposal returned. The collection alternatives and the arithmetic behind them are set out here.
The order of operations changes the total
File before or after establishing the collection alternative. Claim First-Time Abate before or after arguing reasonable cause. Submit an Offer in Compromise before or after checking the collection statute date. Each of those sequences has a right answer that materially changes what you pay, and none of them is intuitive. The penalty sequencing question is a good example.
The corroboration, and why it is worth more than a general one
Anyone can describe themselves as a specialist. What makes the claim checkable is what a third party is willing to say about it.
Melissa Sanders is an Enrolled Agent, enrollment number 00172517-EA, which is a federal credential granted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and verifiable in the IRS directory of credentialed preparers. She is also a member of the American Society of Tax Problem Solvers, a professional body founded in 2003 that exists solely for practitioners doing IRS representation work.
That second membership is the more specific signal of the two. A general professional association says a practitioner is in good standing. A body devoted entirely to tax resolution says something narrower and more useful: that resolution is what they do, corroborated by an organisation that would have no reason to list them otherwise.
The short version
Ask what a firm does with the rest of its week. If the honest answer is bookkeeping and payroll, that firm is well positioned for a business that needs bookkeeping and payroll. If you are holding a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, the more relevant question is how many of those the person opposite you reads in a year.
Horizon Tax Group is led by Melissa Sanders, EA, an Enrolled Agent admitted to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, enrollment number 00172517-EA.
Enrolled Agent is a federal credential granted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It carries unlimited rights of representation before the IRS in all fifty states, which is why a Woodinville firm can take a case in any of them. Melissa is a member of the American Society of Tax Problem Solvers, a body devoted entirely to IRS representation.
The Position, FAQ
Questions about how we are structured.
Is a tax-only firm better than an accounting firm?
Not universally. It is better for tax problems and worse for everything else. If you need bookkeeping, payroll, financial statements or a fractional CFO, a general accounting firm is the correct choice and a tax-only firm cannot serve you. If you have an IRS matter, or a return complex enough that the tax analysis is the work, specialisation is worth more than breadth.
Can my regular accountant handle an IRS problem?
They can if they hold a CPA licence, since that carries unlimited representation rights. Whether they should is a different question, and it turns on how much of their week is spent in IRS procedure rather than in financial reporting. Collection procedure, the Collection Financial Standards, Collection Due Process deadlines and the mechanics of an Offer in Compromise are a distinct body of practice, and competence in them comes from repetition.
What is ASTPS?
The American Society of Tax Problem Solvers, a professional body founded in 2003 that exists solely for practitioners doing IRS representation work. Membership is a narrower signal than a general professional association: it corroborates the specific speciality being claimed rather than general good standing. Melissa Sanders is a member.
Will I be handed off to a junior?
No. The practice is deliberately small, and the person you speak to in the consultation is the person who handles the matter. That is the trade-off of a boutique: fewer clients taken on, and no capacity to absorb a case by delegating it.
Keep Reading
Read next.
Ask Us Directly
Ask what we do
with the rest of the week.
The answer is tax. If your situation needs something we do not do, we will name a firm that does rather than take the work and learn on it.