IRS Announces End of Revenue Officer Surprise Visits (for the most part)

The IRS announced on July 24, 2023 a new policy change regarding Revenue Officers

As part of a larger transformation effort, the Internal Revenue Service today announced a major policy change that will end most unannounced visits to taxpayers by agency revenue officers to reduce public confusion and enhance overall safety measures for taxpayers and employees.

The change reverses a decades-long practice by IRS revenue officers, the unarmed agency employees whose duties include visiting households and businesses to help taxpayers resolve their account balances by collecting unpaid taxes and unfiled tax returns. Effective immediately, unannounced visits will end except in a few unique circumstances and will be replaced with mailed letters to schedule meetings.

IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel announced the change as part of a larger effort to transform IRS operations following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last year and the creation of the new IRS Strategic Operating Plan in April.

“We are taking a fresh look at how the IRS operates to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a common-sense step,” Werfel said. “Changing this long-standing procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall safety for taxpayers and IRS employees.”

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) supports the policy change.

“NTEU welcomes the IRS decision to halt unannounced visits by IRS Field Collection employees,” said Tony Reardon, National President of the National Treasury Employees Union “The safety of IRS employees is of paramount importance and this decision will help protect those whose jobs have only grown more dangerous in recent years because of false, inflammatory rhetoric about the agency and its workforce. We applaud Commissioner Werfel’s quick action after hearing the safety concerns raised by NTEU leaders and IRS Field Collection employees who faced dangerous situations that put their safety at risk. We look forward to working with the IRS on this and other actions to protect the safety of all IRS employees.”

Werfel also noted that there have been increased security concerns in recent years on multiple fronts. The growth in scam artists bombarding taxpayers has increased confusion about home visits by IRS revenue officers. Sometimes scam artists appear at the door posing as IRS agents, creating confusion for not just the taxpayers living there but local law-enforcement.

For IRS revenue officers, these unannounced visits to homes and businesses presented risks. Revenue officers routinely faced hazards and uncertainty making unannounced visits to attempt … Continue reading

Big Mistake Tax Pros Make – including IRS representation work in tax prep fees for clients.

A while ago, I was a guest speaker on a webinar with my good friend Nate Hagerty at TaxProMarketer.com. They were talking about using Google Ads to generate tax resolution leads and some promising statistics they had generated for some of their tax pro clients. The cool thing was this was specifically on tax resolution keywords.

Nate asked me what were some of the biggest mistakes tax resolution tax pros make. So, I thought I would share what I talked about and a few others mistakes we make (yes, I have made many of these myself. School of hard knocks is what they call it).

Big Mistake Tax Pros Make

Probably one of the biggest mistakes I see tax pros make is that they include tax resolution work (calling the IRS for transcripts, setting up an installment agreement (IA), or preparing financial forms) in with the tax prep fee for clients.

Most tax professionals don’t enough for tax prep let alone include additional services like IRS collections work. Same goes for exam/audit related work. Many practitioners get a CP2000 or correspondence exam notice from their clients and they will include it with the current year tax prep. Meaning you need to charge extra for these services (unless it can be determined that somehow the notice was due to your error).

DON’T DO IT! These services are way too valuable. In most cases, the collections or exam work is way more valuable than the tax prep.  I charge $750 base fee for a 1040, $750 as a minimum for handling an IRS notice reply and $500 for a Guaranteed IA (GIA) (they owe less than $10k). The last national average I saw for a 1040 was about $280 and $540 for a business return. Most tax pros charge $25-100 for a GIA, if they charge anything at all.

First, these projects take extra time to deal with and second, they are separate engagements. If you do an engagement letter for a 1040, I bet if you look at the language used, it does not cover notice reply or any other representation work. That means you can (and should) charge separately for this extra work.

All the best,

Dan

Dan Henn, CPA, CTR™, NTPI Fellow
Managing Member
Tax Pro Academy, LLC… Continue reading

Big Mistakes Tax Pros Make – Not charging enough for your services

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