Category: Get More Tax Clients

I’m very excited to announce the launch of a new video series, Inside the IRM.

I’ll be providing commentary and insight into interacting with the IRS, based on a guided tour through the Internal Revenue Manual. I’ve decided to start with IRM Part 5: Collections, simply because that is the section of most interest to myself and, I’m sure, to most of you.

The purpose of each video will not be to simply read you the IRM. Rather, I think it’s worth dissecting the IRM as a means of learning how the IRS thinks and, more importantly, how they’re supposed to act. My goal is really to provide you with a better understanding of how the IRS works, and make sure you know what the IRS really can and can’t do based on their own procedures.

Most important of all, however, I hope to show you how to use the Internal Revenue Manual to better represent your clients. I will be pointing out provisions of the IRM that could be applied to your advantage in certain situations, and discussing how Revenue Officers and other IRS personnel are supposed to act in specific circumstances, so that you can know when things are going right and when a Revenue Officer is abusing their authority or not properly treating a taxpayer. Correlating the Service’s internal procedures with specific client situations and sharing my experience in working with Revenue Officers as it relates to the IRM will hopefully benefit you as a fellow practitioner.

I’ll most likely do these several times per week, and post them along with each day’s marketing update. I didn’t think I could go on about one little section of the IRM for an entire hour, but in this first video I managed to do that (I’ve long known that I have the gift of gab, I guess now I just found another way to embrace it beyond just the written word!). I’ll definitely try to keep them shorter in the future.

These will be posted on YouTube, so feel free to collect them all and trade them with your friends!

Please provide feedback, comments, and even criticisms on these so that I can make them more applicable to your practice.

Here is the first edition, covering IRM Section 5.1 and the basics of how the IRS is supposed to work collections cases.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM0xXJ0HaB4[/youtube]… Continue reading

I know you’d rather hear about marketing, but I have something that could be of benefit to your clients that I want you to know about.

Based on recent conversations with a few tax practitioners, there is apparently a super-secret method for reducing the Reasonable Collection Potential calculated for an Offer in Compromise. I’m calling it “super-secret” because nobody I’ve been talking to about it so far has noticed it. It’s a method that is hiding in broad daylight, because it’s actually printed right on the Form 656.

One of the elements of the Fresh Start changes that the IRS didn’t make a big deal about in the media was that, for the third time in 18 months, they decided to slightly alter the Offer in Compromise payment options. They reverted to the “Lump Sum Cash” and “Periodic Payment” naming conventions that existed a couple years ago, but made the payment terms for the Lump Sum Cash offer much more clear.

You’re probably already aware that the remaining income multiplier was reduced from 48/60 down to 12/24. If the Offer in Compromise will be paid in full within 5 months of acceptance, the multiplier is 12, otherwise it’s 24 months. You’re probably also aware that it’s currently taking about seven months for an Offer Examiner to be assigned, plus another month or two for the Offer to be processed and accepted.

This gives your client nearly 9 months to get their finances straightened out. More than enough time to figure out how to come up with the Offer money and put it aside. In fact, they can have even more time. After acceptance, the Offer doesn’t need to be paid over the course of 5 months, it needs to be fully paid within 5 months, in order to qualify for the 12 month multiplier.

See the difference there?

In reality, from the time of submitting their Offer, your client can reasonably expect to have a whopping 12 to 14 months to come up with the cash. By filing the Offer with a 12 month multiplier, you get the lowest possible RCP calculation. You simply file it as a Lump Sum Cash Offer, include the 20% down, and need to come up with the other 80% a full 5 months after acceptance. In other words, in section 5 of Form 656, you put ONE payment, dated 5 months after acceptance of the Offer.

With … Continue reading

A few days ago, I learned that Amazon has a nifty little feature in their Kindle publishing system for authors that lets us offer our books for zero cost during any 5 day period once per quarter.

My book, Tax Resolution Secrets is both the #1 and #2 best-selling tax resolution book on Amazon (#2 is the Kindle ebook edition, #1 is the paperback). In order to celebrate this little achievement, I’d like to do this 5-day free offer that Amazon allows authors to do.

So, running through Sunday, you can download the Kindle edition of Tax Resolution Secrets at absolutely no cost. You don’t even need to own a Kindle device in order to read it — there are Kindle apps for most smartphones, and even a Mac and Windows application as well.

The book is 100% geared towards the lay consumer, not towards licensed professionals. However, if you’re new to the tax resolution side of things, you might actually get quite a bit out of reading the book. It discusses appeals, SFRs, Installment Agreements, penalty abatements, the OIC process, lien releases, and more. The book shows people how to handle these sorts of tasks on their own, so I think it would make a good reference book for tax professionals, also.

The other thing that you’ll see about the book is that I use it as a lead generation tool. By downloading the book for yourself, you’ll actually see HOW I use it to generate leads — it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing with it once you actually see it.

The only thing I ask is that you please write a review of the book for me on Amazon. I’ll be working on the second edition here in a few months, and your feedback can help improve the book for everybody else.

To download the book, as well as submit a review, just visit Amazon’s page for Tax Resolution Secrets Kindle Edition.… Continue reading