Tax Relief Blog

IRS Tax Audit and Examination

December 7, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

What is an IRS Tax Audit and Examination?

An IRS tax audit and examination isn’t fun because they will be evaluating all aspects of what you have reported on your tax returns. They have the right to do this for individuals as well as for businesses. Sometimes, there is something on a given tax return that causes them to see red flags. Others are selected at random to be inspected from top to bottom.

It can be very unnerving for an IRS tax audit and examination to occur. They will go through your personal or business tax information. They will do it with a fine toothed comb too, searching for information to verify that the tax information reported is accurate. If everything is accurate they will finish up and be on their way.

Some people get lucky and discover they are entitled to some money from the IRS. However, that isn’t always the way it works. There are more people that find they now owe the IRS more money than they thought.

Bank Levy

December 1, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

What is a Bank Levy?

A bank levy is a very serious incident and one that can cause great distress for you financially. This involves the IRS freezing your bank account. They can take everything that is in it. They don’t care if you have $5, $500, or $5,000. They don’t have to tell you that they are going to do it either.

The information for the bank levy goes right to the financial institution. As a result, you may write checks and then you don’t have any money to cover them. You may need to make a cash withdrawal and find out that you can’t access any of the money you thought you had in that account.

Employment Tax Problem

November 21, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

Employment Taxes

If you have your own business, there is plenty going on all the time. In addition to taking care of your customers, you have to take care of your employees. Payroll can be very difficult with the many scenarios, and that can lead to an employment tax problem. Don’t feel like you are alone though as 941 payroll tax problems are extremely common when it comes to the IRS and what they have to look into.

Effectuate your Offer in Compromise Tax Settlement

November 14, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

Want to reduce your unpaid IRS debt with an Offer in Compromise?

Many taxpayers with back taxes contact us on a daily basis to see if qualifying for an offer in compromise settlement can save them thousands of dollars in taxes, penalties and interest. The widely known offer in compromise settlement is an agreement between the taxpayer and the IRS to settle the taxpayer’s full tax liabilities for possibly less than the full amount owed. Each taxpayer’s, RCP, reasonable collection potential, is different and an offer will not be accepted if the IRS believes that the full unpaid tax liability can be paid in full as a lump sum or through a payment agreement.

Mike Habib, EA Introduces Tax Planning & Tax Coaching Service

November 4, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

2011 year-end tax planning strategies for individual and business taxpayers.

Mike Habib, EA Introduces Tax Planning & Tax Coaching Service

Whittier, CA, November 04, 2011 –(PR.com)– Mike Habib, EA is pleased to announce he has added tax planning and tax coaching to his firm’s services. The new service gives individual and business taxpayers a plain-English plan for beating the IRS – legally by taking advantage to every tax break they deserve.

“Other traditional tax planning firms’ crunches numbers to illustrate ‘what-if’ scenarios based on future assumptions,” said Mr. Habib. It gives clients dry numbers, in more detail than they need or want. But clients don’t want numbers. Clients want savings.

Architects IRS Tax Audit Help Landscape Architects Examination

September 15, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

IRS Audit Overview

Pre-audit Analysis
An in-depth pre-audit analysis is essential to conducting a quality examination. IRS Examiners, Revenue Agents, should prepare a comparative analysis of the taxpayer’s returns for multiple years to assist in the identification of:

• large, unusual and questionable items,
• missing schedules, statements and/or elections
• inconsistencies between different years, and
• audit potential.

A successful IRS taxpayer audit depends upon what is done before the interview. The IRS examiner should obtain as much information about the taxpayer, be organized, and prepare an interview outline that is tailored to the taxpayer under examination. As preliminary information is gathered, it should be carefully reviewed and documented for the IRS tax audit.

Offer in Compromise: OIC’s what, how and where

September 8, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

An offer in compromise (OIC) is an agreement between a taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that settles the taxpayer’s tax liabilities for less than the full amount owed. Absent special circumstances, an offer will not be accepted if the IRS believes that the liability can be paid in full as a lump sum or through an installment agreement.

In most cases, the IRS will not accept an OIC offer in compromise unless the amount offered by the taxpayer is equal to or greater than the reasonable collection potential (RCP). The RCP is how the IRS measures the taxpayer’s ability to pay and includes the value that can be realized from the taxpayer’s assets, such as real property, automobiles, bank accounts, and other property. The RCP also includes anticipated future income, less certain amounts allowed for basic living expenses.

IRS Provides Tax Relief to Victims of Hurricane Irene

September 2, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

Updated 9/02/11 to reflect expanded federally declared disaster area.

The Internal Revenue Service is providing tax relief to individual and business taxpayers impacted by Hurricane Irene.

The IRS announced today that certain taxpayers in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Puerto Rico will receive tax relief, and other locations are expected to be added in coming days following additional damage assessments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The tax relief postpones certain tax filing and payment deadlines to Oct. 31, 2011. It includes corporations and businesses that previously obtained an extension until Sept. 15, 2011, to file their 2010 returns and individuals and businesses that received a similar extension until Oct. 17. It also includes the estimated tax payment for the third quarter of 2011, which would normally be due Sept. 15.

IRS Penalty: Tax penalty facts and how to abate them

August 25, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

When it comes to filing a tax return, or not filing one, the IRS can assess a penalty if you fail to file, fail to pay or both. Here are eight important points the IRS wants you to know about the two different penalties you may face if you do not file or pay timely.

If you do not file by the deadline, you might face a failure-to-file penalty. If you do not pay by the due date, you could face a failure-to-pay penalty.

The failure-to-file penalty is generally more than the failure-to-pay penalty. So if you cannot pay all the taxes you owe, you should still file your tax return on time and explore other payment options in the meantime. The IRS has options such as payment plans, offer in compromise, and other options.

Ft. Lauderdale, FL IRS payroll tax problem help/IRS Levy/Garnishment Miami FL

August 19, 2011 | Mike Habib, EA

Ft Lauderdale FL.jpg

We provide IRS tax help, tax relief, tax resolution and IRS audit representation in the South Florida Metro area of Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Kendall, Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Hollywood, Miramar, Coral Springs, Miami Gardens, Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Miami Dade county and Broward county of Florida.

The IRS has identified many individual and business taxpayers who fail to file income tax returns (1040 for individuals and 1120 for corporations) and employment tax returns (940 and 941) and these taxpayers have effectively stopped paying federal taxes as a serious matter to the US tax administration and the American economy as a whole. The IRS is actively pursuing non-filers owing back taxes with aggressive enforcement of the tax laws by issuing record numbers of tax levies and tax liens.