Taxing, Briefly
Taxing, Briefly
Taxing, Briefly

The IRS Collection Process – Taxing, Briefly

The Basic Principles of the IRS Collection Process In our previous post, we discussed how audits are performed and your available options throughout the examination process.  Once the audit is complete, and all administrative and legal remedies are exhausted, how does the IRS actually collect taxes?  The first step in the IRS collection process is assessment. The IRS cannot collect a tax until it has assessed it. There are a bevy of rules surrounding assessments.  In general, the IRS has three years to assess tax after a return was filed.  If the return was fraudulent, or the taxpayer substantially omitted income, then the IRS has six years to assess.  If no return was filed, then the IRS has carte blanche to assess at any time.  However, it’s the IRS’s stated policy not to look back further than six years. Although this time frame is not absolutely set in stone, it’s…

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May 25, 2021
Taxing, Briefly
Taxing, Briefly
Taxing, Briefly

The IRS Examination Process – Taxing, Briefly

Like Ten Thousand Spoons When All You Need is a Knife Do you feel like you are cursed to forever draw the short straw in life? Is Alanis Morrisette’s Ironic more of a personal anthem than an indictment of the Canadian educational system’s failure to properly differentiate between irony and unfortunate occurrences?  What does this have to do with the IRS examination process?  All in good time... In this post, we will assume that, in addition to the black fly in your chardonnay, you were greeted with a care package in your mailbox from the IRS stating, in short, that your returns had been weighed, measured, and found wanting. Shock and denial set in, followed by pain and anguish, then anger, then bargaining, and, as you are halfway through the second tub of Cherry Garcia in the day, you finally you call your tax attorney to talk about the IRS examination…

1 Comment
May 25, 2021