What’s happening
When the IRS sends you a bill, it looks official. It has numbers, dates, and penalties all added up. So most people assume it must be right.
But IRS bills are wrong more often than you’d think. Some are built on guesses. Some include penalties that should come off. Some are missing payments you already made. And some are for debts the IRS has run out of time to collect.
That’s why we never start with “how are you going to pay this?” We start with “is this even right?”
How we check the number
We get your full IRS record. It shows every year, every charge, every penalty, and every payment. It also shows how the IRS came up with the amount, and how much time they have left to collect.
We look for the usual mistakes. We list the most common ones below. Most bills that are too high have at least one.
Then we fix what’s wrong. How we do that depends on the mistake.
- If the IRS filled in a return for you, we file your real one. The IRS calls their version a Substitute for Return. Your real return usually brings the bill down.
- If an old audit went unanswered, we can ask the IRS to look again with new proof. This is called audit reconsideration.
- If penalties shouldn’t be there, we ask the IRS to take them off. This is called penalty abatement.
- If there’s real doubt that you owe the tax at all, there’s a way to settle on those grounds. It’s called an Offer in Compromise, made on the grounds that you may not owe the tax.
What happens next
Once the number is right, we look at what’s left. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes it’s much smaller than the bill you started with. Either way, the next step is now based on the real number, not the IRS’s first guess.
