Economics Finance

Assuming that paying your tax bill in full is not an option, there are many options available if you need IRS tax help. You may actually find that you don’t need to do anything to resolve your back tax situation. This is because the IRS has only ten years to collect back taxes starting with the date on which the taxes were assessed. As a result, if you know that you have unpaid taxes that are older than ten years, the IRS may not be able to collect those taxes anymore.

Fortunately, for those that can’t afford to pay, there are other options available. The options consist of an Offer in Compromise, Installment Agreement, bankruptcy (under certain conditions), and Currently Not Collectible status.

There are many issues that need to be considered before back taxes can be discharged in bankruptcy. You must examine the age and type of the back taxes. Generally, recent federal tax assessments cannot be discharged. The same is true with back payroll taxes.

An Offer in Compromise can be complex. It requires disclosure of all of your financial information and will more often than not be rejected. But if you still need IRS tax help there are other available remedies if your offer is rejected. Continue reading ‘Need IRS Tax Help? The Solution to Your Tax Problem’ »

If you find that you cannot pay your income tax bill, you will find many options available to you. First of all, the IRS has ten years to collect back taxes from the assessment date. However, there are certain events that can occur that can extend this time period, such as bankruptcy. You must find out if you have unpaid back taxes, the amount of those taxes, and the applicable date that they expire.

An Offer in Compromise (OIC) could solve your tax problem. The offer requires the taxpayer to prove that he or she will not be able to pay the full back taxes over four or five years even if the IRS forced a sale of all assets that the taxpayer owns. Just like other available options, an offer in compromise can only be accepted if a taxpayer has filed all of his or her back tax returns. Continue reading ‘Need IRS Tax Relief? How to Solve Your Tax Problems’ »

When you are looking for help with settling your taxes with the IRS it is hard not to find something questionable. The truth is that the more people hear about various ways the government and its agencies are assisting citizens, the more con artists there are trying to trap potential victims. Some of the things to look for are those that promise to have the IRS forgive all of your debt. No firm can guarantee this because they haven’t consulted with the IRS until they have your case. If their price quote seems lower than it should be, that is an indication as well. Either they will charge extra at the end, or you will see no results. That is what happens a lot in these cases.

If you are looking for general information you will be able to find some on those article and information bases that have sprung up all over the net. Many of those also give web addresses that you can follow to more information. If you are looking for more specific facts then checking out the Federal Government and the IRS sites are a great start. Looking for lawyers over the net is a little more difficult, but if you check out their credentials, history, and affiliations then you will find out if you are dealing with a professional or not. Continue reading ‘Researching Tax Settlements With IRS For Correct Directions and Information!’ »

There are skeptics for everything – grants, loans, business tactics, and of course, tax debt settlement. If we thought that this one would get past the eye of the critic, then we thought wrong. Tax debt settlement can be an excellent source for saving a tax ridden neck. For those who have thousands of dollars in back taxes, no matter how it happened, they may simply not have the funds to pay them and could end up in deep trouble with other debt collectors because of it. That is why they need to apply to the IRS to compromise on the amount. The IRS is usually happy to see those in such positions offering them a portion of the amount. It shows that the person actually cares enough to deal with it rather than running away. If you try to avoid it, the IRS won’t have so much pity on you.

There may be various reasons why the skeptics have shown such criticism, and some of the stories are true. You have to look at the other side as well though. There are always at least two sides for every story. There are also reasons why such things happened. If someone didn’t get approved or didn’t have as much taken off as they thought they would have then it was for a reason. It could be there was a mistake on the form, information missing, inaccurate information, or even an issue with the lawyer. The IRS knows the real cases and if you have one, you won’t have to be nervous. Continue reading ‘Skeptics Judge Tax Settlement With IRS Too Harshly!’ »

Assuming that the taxpayer agrees to the tax liability, the best way to resolve your Internal Revenue Service (IRS) back or prior taxes is to pay them in full. This would include paying the interest and penalties that have accrued since the original assessment. The penalties and interest can add up quickly since they continue to accrue until paid in full.

Unfortunately, most taxpayers can’t afford to pay their taxes in full so they must resort to other options such as an Installment Agreement or an Offer in Compromise. These programs have been established to assist taxpayers who owe the IRS.

An installment agreement is a monthly payment plan that is agreed to between the IRS and the taxpayer that is based on how much the debt is and how much you can afford to pay. Depending on the dollar amount, you may have to disclose your income and your financial position. In order to qualify, the taxpayer must be current with all tax returns. Continue reading ‘Owe the IRS? What Are Your Options?’ »

The biggest problem with missing a tax due date is that it gets a little less stressful every day. April 15th is awful, April 16th is bad, but after a while, you might notice that the IRS hasn’t caught up to you. But after a few weeks, it fades into the background: maybe they’ll forget, maybe they filed your information for you. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. The IRS often takes a while to catch up to delinquent taxpayers, but they definitely try to ensure that people who miss filing have a good reason to file late taxes.

The first incentive the IRS uses is that even if they’re not keeping in touch, you’re accumulating fees and penalties. There are multiple fineable offenses associated with the failure to file taxes on time, even if you do end up getting it done late, and they add up pretty fast. In addition, the IRS charges a brutal rate of interest before you file late taxes — generally, the rate is 1% per month. With your debt accumulating so fast, it’s a good idea to hurry up and slow this process down.

Once you do file late taxes, the situation improves. First, you’ll stop accumulating so many fines. Second, the interest you owe drops to about a quarter of a percentage point per month — one of the lowest-interest borrowings available to any consumer. When you file late taxes, the IRS will ask you to pay them back pretty quickly (immediately, or over a period of months), but this is also not as daunting as it might seem. Continue reading ‘File Late Taxes – How To, Why To’ »

It is a glorious event that takes place every year without fail. The month of April rolls around and the drama builds. Then it happens. You file tax returns? No. You file an extension! The folklore surrounding the act of filing an extension is extensive, but does it really impact your risk of being audited by the IRS? Let’s take a look.

As an individual taxpayer, you have the option of filing for an extension to file your tax form each year so long as you do it on or before April 15th. The magic document is Form 4868. It is shocking short and simple to fill out. Even better, the application is granted automatically by the IRS. You get a six month extension to October 15th to get your act together. Most people remember this deadline right around October 14th in the middle of the night, but that is another matter.

The filing of an extension is seen by some as an act that causes a reaction by the IRS. Depending on who you are talking to, this reaction can be good or it can be bad. The “good reaction” crowd believes that filing an extension is a good move because it lowers your risk of an audit. The thinking is the IRS hires extra employees to help it during the tax season around April and then lets them go. With fewer employees around, there is less chance you’ll get audited because there simply isn’t the manpower to do it.

The “bad reaction” crowd looks at the extension differently. They believe the filing of extensions, particularly when done year after year is indicates to the IRS that you are up to something. This, in turn, puts you on either a watch list or sends you straight to an audit. Either result is, of course, bad. Continue reading ‘Does Filing an Extension Change Your Risk of Being Audited?’ »

When you blow a whistle for people who cheat IRS, you can get a reward – up to 30 per cent of the tax and penalty collected. But the things are not that straightforward. You should also know the fine print of the offer.

The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 introduced this program. It says if you come across someone evading taxes to the tune of $2 million or more, you can report information on such tax cheat to IRS. There is one more condition – the income of such cheat should exceed $200,000. It is obvious that someone hiding two million dollars will have an annual income of $200,000!

So IRS is targeting high income growth to make its effort worthwhile. Consequently, people giving such information can be only the employees or former employees of a business or the ex-boyfriends or girlfriends or ex-spouse of the evader.

The law is providing the whistle-blower some privileges – The whistle-blower may not necessarily be an original source. Secondly, if he is not satisfied with the reward, he will have a right to go to a tax court within a period of 30 days from the date IRS decides on the reward.

The amount of reward is also made lucrative – the whistle-blower is entitled to a reward ranging from 15 per cent to 30 per cent of the tax and penalties collected and depending upon his contribution to get the collection. If he is not the ‘original’ source of information, he can still get up to 10 per cent of the amount collected as a contributor towards collection. Continue reading ‘You Will Need Patience to Get Those Lucrative Commissions As a Successful Tax Whistleblower!’ »

United States citizens, who are living and earning outside the country, do not have to pay taxes on all or part of their income to the government. These citizens are entitled to an exclusion of up to $91,400 per annum, and are further entitled to exclude the amount that they spend for housing under the “Foreign Housing Deduction” along with the amount spent on meals.

To be eligible for these deductions, one must spend at least one whole calendar year abroad. This holds true even if the citizen returns to the United States for a short time. He can also go to other places for short visits, and still retain his eligibility to these deductions. A citizen can claim the normal tax exclusion of all other foreign earners if he is self-employed and working abroad. However, he is expected to pay self employment tax to the government. Continue reading ‘Foreign Earned Income and IRS’ »

There are way too many families in America that are feeling this crisis to an extreme degree. The utility bills are piling up, the mortgage has been sitting there for weeks, there’s not enough food in the house, and the children need books for school again. It’s a real crunch on finances in the everyday life, but then the IRS goes and adds to this by giving you a bill for back taxes. Now you just don’t know what to do. You are already working as much as you can and the income simply isn’t going far enough. What do you do?

Check into applying for a tax settlement with the IRS. If you can prove that you are in a really financially tough situation right now and it certainly isn’t going to be looking up any time in the near future, then grab an application and start moving on it. The faster that you do this, the quicker you can have some of that debt removed and less penalties tacked on because for sure by now they already have done that. They will keep on adding them as well until you either pay if off or make this move. Continue reading ‘Are Your Back Taxes Getting You Down? Apply For a Settlement With the IRS!’ »