Should you be nice to the IRS?

Should you be nice to the IRS?

https://ift.tt/1RfwK1f Tax lawyer Anthony Parent of Parent & Parent LLP helps answer this question. The IRS is a scary, dense organization. The IRS has powers you wouldn’t believe, yet communicates in a way that is often indecipherable. Yet it is critical you understand what the IRS is saying — as if you get something wrong, the IRS can levy bank accounts, garnish any payments to you, file a tax lien —- all without a court order. So with these constraints, it is at all possible to be nice to the IRS? Would you be better off being mean and nasty to them? You might think that by chewing out the IRS, you can get them to back off and be reasonable. You might think that by finding the biggest pit bull of an attorney, that will put the IRS in its place. Well does it? I think I can answer this question by answering a different question: Are there any strategic advantages to being nice to the IRS? Let me illustrate the difference. Over 10 years ago, I was at an IRS conference sitting next to a CPA whose had an office down the street from ours. He was bragging to me about how awesome he was. He might have been hitting the wine a little hard too. We were both sitting at the same table. He was showing me letters and emails he sent to IRS agents. So he proceeded to tell me the he enjoyed working overtime to humiliate and annoy all the revenue agents and officers he ran into. He really seemed to be impressed by himself. He was a force to be reckoned with, don’t you know? Afterwards, I asked some of my friends in the IRS what they thought of this CPA. The consensus was something like “Yeah we know he’s a jerk. Too bad his clients don’t know he is ineffective.” Here’s the thing. We tend to be nice. Some of it was bound to happen. My first partner, my father, David G. Parent, worked in state and municipal agencies for decades — he was a government bureaucrat. And myself, I applied for a job as a revenue officer in 1997. So my dad and I never looked at IRS employees “as others.” We thought, you know they could be us? So intuitively, we were also nice to the IRS. We treated them as we want to be treated. And what has this niceness done? As much as I rail on the unfairness, inappropriateness, and the injustice of the US income tax, it would be completely dishonest for me to say that IRS employees are bad. In fact, some of them have been the greatest friends to us imaginable. Below are four quotes from IRS employees who were speaking to us about various cases. While we did not necessarily get the exact thing we were looking for, we did get the overall relief our clients were seeking. “Anthony I can't let your client win on the statute of limitations issue as local counsel won’t sign off on it. But what I will do is put your client into a hardship status where in 5 months they can win on the statute of limitations issue.” This saved my clients thousands in legal fees and a complete disaster at home. If we were nasty, would this IRS appeals officer hand us this unconventional win? “Anthony, if you just get me proof your client is trying to sell their vacant property I’ll push this through. I don’t care what my manager says. I’ll take the heat.” this was a quote from a revenue officer stuck his neck out to help us save our clients’ home and business. If we were jerks, would he have stuck his neck out? “Sorry, your client filed their tax court petition a day late. I can’t do anything about that. But here, why not go to the taxpayer advocate? I bet your client has a better chance getting that employee classification they with them rather than with the tax court anyway.” This was a quote from an IRS attorney. And he was right. We ultimately won and our client saved $480,000. “We were investigating your client for tax evasion and FBAR violations. But seeing how he’s hired your firm, as long as you follow your compliance plan, we will move on to someone else.” This is a quote from a Department of Justice attorney. He saved our client from a criminal indictment and millions in taxes and penalties, restitution, along with the brutal humiliation of an indictment. In all four cases, we got help from the people that were supposed to be against us. I think a reason why is that these IRS and Department of Justice employees saw our clients as real people. Government employees, while perhaps biased, are not inherently bad at all. Their goodness can seep out despite the government’s best wishes. The thing is you have to give them room to do so — niceness helps create that space. Parent & Parent LLP 144 South Main Street Wallingford, CT 06492 (203) 269-6699 info@irsmedic.com https://youtu.be/RTbZlPGCe7U IRS Medic