How A Tax Attorney Helps In Tax Problems?

Most people have every intention of paying their taxes on time and in full each and every year. Then, they experience a tragedy like a death in the family, loss of a job, or serious medical issues and they fall behind. That usually leads to a few years of not filing, and then the dreaded letter from the IRS asking for their returns and pointing out how they could run afoul of the law by not filing. Fear of the being arrested is deeply ingrained most people, and the vast majority of those that don’t file are not criminals and have never intentionally committed a crime. Yet, there they are, feeling threatened with incarceration if they don’t do something soon.

Most Problems With The IRS and Taxes Are Preventable

The huge majority of tax problems are fairly easily prevented with a little preparation and some diligence. A good tax attorney is worth their weight in gold if you have them set you up with a solid system of keeping accurate records and making regular payments into the IRS. Where people make their biggest mistake is thinking that they’ll take care of it later.

That usually leads to not having any records of expenses at the end of the year and having to try to make everything up before they file. The IRS can usually tell when a business or individual has either made up or exaggerated their expenses. They have computers that take averages of every other similar business and their expenses to see how yours match up. Any person or company that looks like an outlier will most likely get a letter to bring in their receipts and records. That’s the last thing you’d want to do if you made everything thing up at the end of the year.

By sitting down with a tax lawyer right at the beginning and setting up an exact plan that includes a computer program that has easy to enter data fields will make everything go way smoother. The attorney will interview you to find out what your expenses are, and find some that you didn’t know you could take as well. Then he’ll put everything together so you will know exactly how much you should send in each month to the IRS to avoid penalties. That’s the way successful businesses are run and why they stay in business and out of jail.

If You’ve Neglected To File You Can Make A Deal

If you went a couple of years and didn’t file, but most likely didn’t make a lot of money anyway, a good tax lawyer can make an agreement with the IRS to let you make payments on your back taxes and sometimes eliminate the penalties. Each case is different, of course, but the IRS doesn’t want to put you in jail, they want you to go to work, make payments, and pay even more taxes in the future. Putting you in jail costs them money In several ways and isn’t a good long-term strategy for the government anyway.

While you can go into the IRS and try to cut your own deal and you’ll most likely get one, the agreement that a qualified tax lawyer can get for you will most often be better. Through experience, they’ll know exactly the lowest amount that the IRS will settle for, both for the principal and late fees, and that’s what they’ll get. If you go it alone, the IRS agent will offer you the highest settlement amount they can and you won’t know how much to counter offer. That’s why you’ll want an experienced IRS tax attorney to help you with your tax problems. They’ll even have a trusted contact in the IRS that they work with often and already know exactly what to expect.

The last thing you ever want to do is continue to procrastinate on filing and paying your taxes. The longer you wait, the more the penalties add up, plus the more likely the IRS will start a criminal investigation against you, you don’t want that. They don’t file very many, but those that they do file, they have a strong winning record and put a fair number of those people in jail. They really prefer making a payment plan with people that are behind and avoiding trials and everything involved with them.