{"id":331354,"date":"2017-10-20T18:58:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T17:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=331354"},"modified":"2017-10-20T18:59:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T17:59:14","slug":"3-things-irs-doesnt-want-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/3-things-irs-doesnt-want-know\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Things the IRS Doesn\u2019t Want You to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Internal Revenue Service\u2019s (IRS) website at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irs.gov\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.irs.gov<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has a staggering 118,000 pages. And you\u2019d think with that much information available for public consumption, keeping things hidden would be a virtual impossibility. After all, we\u2019re talking about the IRS here, not the CIA (note: you did not read that\u2026or this).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, even after all of these years \u2014 the IRS was founded all the way back in 1862 \u2014 there are still a few things that the IRS keeps very, very close to the vest. That is, until now! Behold, three things that the IRS doesn\u2019t want you to know, but that you need and deserve to discover:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>IRS agents make mistakes more often than you think.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If we\u2019re talking about the number of times you make par on the golf course, or the discount you get off the (hilarious) Manufacturer&#8217;s Suggested Retail Price on your next car, then 30 percent is a good number. Heck, it may be a great number. But we aren\u2019t talking about golfing and driving. We\u2019re talking about the number of IRS agents who dole out the wrong information.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, believe it or not, but about 30 percent of the time IRS agents know less about tax law than you do. What\u2019s more, unlike folks like you who wisely \u201cknow what you don\u2019t know,\u201d IRS agents assume that they\u2019re right. Except about 1 out of ever 3 times, they aren\u2019t. Keep this in mind when dealing with the IRS. Don\u2019t assume that they\u2019re automatically wrong, but don\u2019t take everything they say or write as sacrosanct, either.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The IRS really doesn\u2019t want to seize your assets.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Though it\u2019s the threat that keeps some taxpayers awake at night, the truth is that the IRS really doesn\u2019t want to seize your assets. They aren\u2019t in the repo and liquidation business. In most cases, the IRS would much prefer \u2014 even if they don\u2019t come out and reveal it \u2014 for you to make a valid Offer-in-Compromise (OIC), which is a settlement proposal that (obviously) is for less than you owe. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, as pointed out by Jeffrey B. Kahn, a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/kahntaxlaw.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tax lawyer in Orange County<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who is certified to go head-to-head against the IRS in U.S. Federal Tax Court, many OIC petitions are returned or rejected because they\u2019re incomplete, or fail to meet deadlines. What\u2019s more, a surprising number of people propose to settle for more than the IRS would have likely been willing to accept.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>The IRS would rather you didn\u2019t hire a tax attorney.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you\u2019re flagged for an audit, while the IRS would never come out and advise you against hiring a tax attorney (at least not on the record!), the fact is that they\u2019re really rather prefer that you didn\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reason for this is simple and practical: communications and work product with a tax attorney are protected by attorney-client privilege. Communications and work product with accountants, bookkeepers, next-door-neighbor financial wizards and the like aren\u2019t. If the situation moves forward into a full-blown audit or a criminal investigation, then it\u2019s virtually certain that some or all of these folks will be at least questioned, and probably subpoenaed. In other words, they essentially become the IRS\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de facto<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> data gathering team (which you paid for). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With this being said, don\u2019t fall for the old cop game that goes \u201cif you hire an attorney, then you must be guilty, because people who haven\u2019t done anything wrong don\u2019t need attorneys.\u201d The amount of regret that this tactic has generated is unfathomable. It wasn\u2019t true in the past, it isn\u2019t true now, and it\u2019ll never be true in the future. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People hire tax attorneys because they don\u2019t know \u2014 and will never know \u2014 the ins and outs of tax law, which is arguably the most incomprehensible and byzantine body of law the country; and possibly, in existence. If you doubt this, pour yourself an extra large coffee and take a gander at <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/26\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Title 26 of the United States\u00a0Code<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (don\u2019t say we didn\u2019t warn you!). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Bottom Line<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When dealing with the IRS, knowledge is power \u2014 provided that you\u2019re getting the full story, and not just bits here and pieces there. The above insights give you a sense of what\u2019s going on, and possibly what\u2019s in store. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Internal Revenue Service\u2019s (IRS) website at https:\/\/www.irs.gov has a staggering 118,000 pages. And you\u2019d think with that much information available for public consumption, keeping things hidden would be a virtual impossibility. After all, we\u2019re talking about the IRS here, not the CIA (note: you did not read that\u2026or this). However, even after all of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-331354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}