IRS Audit Lawyers
Each year in the United States, more than 150 million Americans are required to file a tax return. Despite government propaganda to the contrary, the U.S. tax system is anything but voluntary. Failure to comply with tax laws can have serious consequences, including steep fines and even the possibility of jail time.
Fortunately, IRS audits, the first step in the process towards building criminal tax non-compliance cases against taxpayers, only happen about 1 percent of the time. Last year, only around 1.5 million taxpayers were audited. The majority of those audits took place through the mail, allowing the taxpayer to send in the required information without having to present at an IRS field office. However, a large minority of IRS audits do require taxpayers to come in and sit with an IRS agent in person. Requests to present at the IRS field office are generally an indication that there is a more serious concern on the part of the IRS. Many in-person interviews involve strong suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.
Even in the case of the more benign mail-in IRS audits, it is highly advisable to retain competent and experienced legal counsel. Our tax attorneys have decades of experience and can help you to reach a settlement with the IRS that won’t leave you financially ruined or making payments for years to come. And our experienced lawyers can help you to avoid many of the pitfalls that can result in higher than necessary fines, fees and penalties.
But in the case that you have received notice that you need to come in and talk with an IRS agent in person, it is absolutely imperative that you hire a skilled tax attorney to help guide you through the process. Like police interrogators, IRS agent are highly trained and adept at getting people to impeach themselves and make statements that can later be used against them.
Most in-person interviews at IRS field offices are a strong indicator that the agent suspects potential criminal tax evasion has taken place. These interviews mean that the agent suspects that there is much more than just a few improper deductions or a slight underreporting of total income. Things that often give rise to in-person interviews include suspicion of massive hiding of off-books income, such as that generated by cash businesses, fraudulent reporting of large business expenses and illegal offshoring of business income.
Going into an IRS field-office audit without an experienced lawyer to help you can quickly turn disastrous. And although only a few thousand Americans are sent to prison each year on tax evasion charges, once you’ve been called in for an interview, your chances of actually seeing the inside of a prison cell have just gone up 1000-fold.
Our skilled tax attorneys can save you millions and keep you out of jail
Our tax attorneys have been through the IRS audit process with clients hundreds of times. We know what pitfalls to avoid and what angles are the most fruitful from which to begin negotiations.
Despite the potentially severe penalties and the prospect of prison time, the good news with IRS audits is that when you retain one of our experienced lawyers, your chances of actually doing jail time drop to almost zero. In the decades that we’ve been practicing law, none of our clients has ever seen the inside of a prison.
The other great benefit of hiring our firm is that we can often reduce your final tax bill by hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. This can make the difference between your run in with the IRS being a serious but surmountable inconvenience versus it being a life-ruining imposition of crushing debt.
What IRS doesn’t want people to know is that they really aren’t interested in sending anyone to prison. People who are locked up don’t earn money and end up with a criminal record, making paying back their delinquent tax bills even more unlikely. What the IRS does want is to maximize its revenues while providing a demonstrable deterrent against tax non-compliers. With the right approach, the IRS can be convinced that a settlement that is both conducive to our clients’ long-term earning potential as well as the IRS’ chances of receiving the most back taxes is in everyone’s best interest.