When the IRS is the problem,
you need someone admitted to argue it.

The honest version of how this works

Most advertising in this industry sells a feeling: that there is a programme you have not heard of, and a firm that knows how to unlock it. There is not. What exists is a body of federal procedure, published in the Internal Revenue Manual and Treasury regulations, that anyone can read and very few people can apply under pressure while their wages are being garnished.

That is the actual service. Someone who has read your account transcript before rather than for the first time, who knows which of the six or seven available paths your facts support, and who is federally admitted to take the matter up with the IRS directly so you do not have to.

It also means we will sometimes tell you that your best move is to pay the balance and stop paying anyone to help. That happens more often than the industry admits, and saying it is cheaper for you than a retainer spent confirming it slowly.

Where resolution cases actually start

Almost every case begins in one of three places. Understanding which one you are in tells you how much time you have.

1. A notice arrived

The IRS sends a sequence, not a single letter. A CP14 is the first bill. A CP501, CP503 and CP504 escalate. An LT11 or Letter 1058 is the Final Notice of Intent to Levy, and it starts the thirty-day clock that ends with a levy and, critically, the window in which you can request a Collection Due Process hearing. Each notice and its deadline is set out here.

2. Something has already been taken

A bank levy, a wage garnishment, or a Notice of Federal Tax Lien filed publicly against your property. These are the urgent cases. A bank levy holds funds for twenty-one days before remitting them, and that window is the entire opportunity. Liens and levies are covered in detail here.

3. Nothing has happened yet, and that is the worry

Unfiled returns, an underreported year, a balance you know is coming. This is the best time to arrive, because voluntary compliance before enforcement gives you every option including the ones that close later. Unfiled returns are covered here.

The six problems we handle

Each of these has its own page, because each is genuinely a different problem with a different remedy, a different clock and a different first step.

• IRS Notices & Letters — What a CP14, CP504 or LT11 actually means, what deadline it starts, and which ones you can safely read twice before acting.
• Tax Liens & Levies — A lien is a claim on what you own. A levy is a taking. They are different problems with different remedies and different clocks.
• Unfiled Tax Returns — Years of missing returns feel unsurvivable and are usually the most fixable case we see. Compliance comes before any negotiation.
• Payment Plans & Offer in Compromise — Installment agreements, partial-pay plans, Currently Not Collectible and the Offer in Compromise, and how the IRS actually decides between them.
• IRS Audit Representation — Correspondence, office and field audits, what the examiner is allowed to ask for, and why you should not attend alone.
• Penalty Abatement — First-Time Abate and reasonable cause are two different arguments. Penalties and the interest on them are often the largest removable portion of a balance.

What the Enrolled Agent credential changes

Anyone with a PTIN can prepare a return. Very few can represent you. Under Circular 230, unlimited representation rights before the IRS belong to three groups: Enrolled Agents, CPAs and attorneys. An unenrolled preparer generally cannot argue your case at all beyond the return they personally signed, and cannot appear before Appeals or Collections.

An Enrolled Agent is licensed federally by the Department of the Treasury specifically in taxation, through a three-part examination on individual taxation, business taxation, and representation practice and procedure. It is the only one of the three credentials that is exclusively about tax and exclusively federal. We have set out the honest comparison between the three, including when an attorney is the better call.

How an engagement runs

1. Consultation. You describe the situation. We tell you what we think it is and what we would need to confirm it. No fee is quoted before this.
2. Form 2848 and transcripts. A Power of Attorney lets us pull your full IRS account transcript, wage and income transcript, and return transcript. This is where guesswork ends. The transcript shows every assessment, every penalty, every payment, and the Collection Statute Expiration Date for each year.
3. Compliance first. Missing returns get filed. The IRS will not agree to any collection alternative while you are non-compliant, so this is not optional and it is not a delay tactic.
4. Financial analysis. Where a collection alternative is in play, we build the Form 433-A or 433-B analysis against the Collection Financial Standards and see what the IRS will actually conclude before we propose anything.
5. The remedy, and the deadlines. Whichever path the facts support, filed properly and on time, with us as the point of contact throughout.
6. Staying resolved. Most agreements default because of a later filing or a later balance. We tell you exactly what would break it.

Comparisons worth reading before you decide

• OIC vs Installment Agreement vs Currently Not Collectible — The three main ways a tax debt ends, side by side: who qualifies, what it costs, what it does to the collection clock.
• Tax Lien vs Tax Levy — Two words used interchangeably that mean entirely different things. What each one does, and what stops it.
• Enrolled Agent vs CPA vs Tax Attorney — All three can represent you before the IRS. The honest account of when each one is the right call, including when it is not us.
• First-Time Abate vs Reasonable Cause — The two routes to penalty relief, why using the wrong one first can cost you the other, and the order to claim them in.