I was on a conference call yesterday with several other practitioners who practice in the area of tax problem resolution because I had a specific question that I was hoping to get answered but also because I wanted to get a sense of what other people around the country are dealing with related to the IRS.  What I heard startled me.

Here’s a little background on the case I had a question about.  Basically, the IRS is levying my client’s income.  The type of arrangement my client has with her client makes this levy basically a 100% levy so she has absolutely no income to pay basic living expenses.  The revenue officer was not working with us on getting the levy released (or at least reduced) so I filed a Taxpayer Assistance Order (Form 911) with the Taxpayer Advocate’s office to seek some relief from them.  The Taxpayer Advocate’s letterhead has this quote in its logo, “Your Voice at the IRS.”  However, when I received her response the letter appeared to have been written by the revenue officer and signed by the taxpayer advocate.  In a nutshell the letter said, “too bad, so sad.” Because my client was not “in compliance” (meaning she was current with all of her taxes) the taxpayer advocate could not help her.  My question is this, who calls the taxpayer advocate for help?  Certainly not the people who have no tax issues and are current!  It is the person who is struggling to get on their feet and the IRS is harassing them who needs the help of the Taxpayer Advocate.

What I heard on the conference call yesterday was that many practitioners around the country are also dealing with this type of IRS.  It is hard to get any help even when you are doing everything you can to get back on track with the IRS.  There have been some rumors about the IRS recently and that things may “loosen up” for a little while because of the state of the economy.  However, nothing has come down in any official capacity to give practitioners any guidance.