If you find yourself in trouble with the IRS, the best thing you can do for yourself is to hire a tax attorney. Whether you are faced with business tax issues, property seizures, audits, or challenges that only small business owners face, a tax attorney can negotiate on your behalf and navigate you through the sometimes frightening waters of dealing with the IRS.
Although you might think that the IRS will simply leave you alone if you pretend you don’t notice them, the truth is that penalties and interest are both accruing at an astonishing rate, so the sooner you hire a tax attorney, the better off you’ll be in the long run. Here are the top four reasons that you can trust tax attorneys:
1. Confidentiality
Tax attorneys have to maintain the same standards of confidentiality required of any other attorney. This means that you can feel comfortable sharing all of your financial information with a tax attorney without fear that such information can be used against you. You can be honest about your past indiscretions and work with him or her to come up with creative solutions to your tax problems.
A tax attorney will never give you advice that includes criminal activity, but he or she will also never disclose any information about potential criminal behavior. CPAs and bookkeepers are not held to the same standards of confidentiality, which means that the court can require them to testify against you. This limits the amount of honest disclosure you can have and will keep them from being able to negotiate the best possible scenario for you.
2. Practicality
Taxes are a down and dirty business. They involve every aspect of your life, from your financial records to the lifestyle that you and your family have chosen for yourselves. And good tax advice involves these very practical, everyday issues.
A tax attorney will help you set up your finances so that you don’t break the law; and if you have broken the law, whether purposefully or inadvertently, they will help you navigate your way out of the situation you’re in with helpful solutions. They can help you set up an Offer in Compromise or tell you whether or not you should file for bankruptcy. But they will not stop until a resolution has been reached on your behalf.
3. Negotiation
IRS agents can be intimidating creatures, relentless in their pursuit of what they believe you owe the government. And they are powerful. They use that power to their advantage, believing that demonstrating that power will cause you to give up without a fight. But they don’t have that same power over tax attorneys, which puts tax attorneys in a unique position as negotiators on your behalf.
4. Intelligence
Tax laws are constantly changing, and it is the job of tax attorneys to keep up with those changes and make them work to your advantage. Even if you were to read up on the tax laws in your state, they would be different in no time, meaning that you would never be able to keep up with all of them on your own. Let a tax attorney worry about that instead.
You need a tax attorney. Ask family and friends for recommendations. Ask local business owners whom you trust, or ask other lawyers in other specializations. Take advantage of the free consultations that most attorneys offer and see what they have to say about your unique situation. Find one with whom you think you could build a good working relationship and then let him or her go to work for you. You’ll save yourself a long of time, money, and heartache in the long run if you simply let a tax attorney do what he does best on your behalf.
Sourced from: HG Legal Resources
Image Source: Thinkstock/BrianAJackson
Posted on May 22, 2023