Where in the world is JK Harris?

by Gina Anton, Director, Corporate Communications

Next month, JK Harris embarks on a speaking tour to promote some big ideas. JK Harris is passionate about small business and is embarking on this tour to share his ideas on growing small businesses, creating jobs on the local level. He feels that small business owners can play a big part in the regrowth of our economy.

Read more about his speaking tour on The Flashpoints blog.

You can also sign up for The Flashpoints newsletter on this site to get business tips for your small business.

JK Harris presents… News from the Net

There is a lot going on with tax news and financial information right now, so I decided to do a news round up – something I have not done on the Tax Resolution blog before. There were several informative links I found and wanted to share with our readers this morning. The first link was provided by one of our blog readers, Ann.

Ann covered the topic of “5 Tips for determining the amount a bank will lend you to buy a home.” Her article is an informative one that may help many of our clients who are getting out of tax debt so they can buy a home of their own. Thank you to Ann for providing this link.

MarketWatch covered some of the best tax tips in their Tax Guide 2011. This web guide offers advice on everything taxes. While it may be too late for your 2010 tax return, this helpful article can give you ideas on tax planning for 2011.

And, according to CNNMoney.com, it looks like Congress will be getting right to work on repealing the much hated IRS ruling with regard to 1099s. The rule, as it currently stands would have required small businesses to issue a 1099 IRS form not only to contracted workers, but also to any individuals or corporations from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a year. This rule was slated to take effect in 2012 and was much maligned by small business due to the amount of additional work it would cause. (Many small businesses would have had to hire additional staff to keep up with the paperwork alone.)

And last, but not least – the IRS’ tax tip of the day recommends taxpayers choose direct deposit to receive your tax refund faster. Visit the IRS website to read the full article.

Ten Tax Benefits for Parents

From the IRS Newsroom

Did you know that your children may help you qualify for some tax benefits? Here are 10 tax benefits the IRS wants parents to consider when filing their tax returns this year.

1. Dependents In most cases, a child can be claimed as a dependent in the year they were born. For more information see IRS Publication 501, Exemptions, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information.

2. Child Tax Credit You may be able to take this credit on your tax return for each of your children under age 17. If you do not benefit from the full amount of the Child Tax Credit, you may be eligible for the Additional Child Tax Credit. For more information see IRS Publication 972, Child Tax Credit.

3. Child and Dependent Care Credit You may be able to claim the credit if you pay someone to care for your child under age 13 so that you can work or look for work. For more information see IRS Publication 503, Child and Dependent Care Expenses.

4. Earned Income Tax Credit The EITC is a benefit for certain people who work and have earned income from wages, self-employment or farming. EITC reduces the amount of tax you owe and may also give you a refund. For more information see IRS Publication 596, Earned Income Credit.

5. Adoption Credit You may be able to take a tax credit for qualifying expenses paid to adopt an eligible child. Taxpayers claiming the adoption credit must file a paper tax return because adoption-related documentation must be included. For more information see the instructions for IRS Form 8839, Qualified Adoption Expenses.

6. Children with Earned Income If your child has income earned from working they may be required to file a tax return. For more information see IRS Publication 501.

7. Children with Investment Income Under certain circumstances a child’s investment income may be taxed at the parent’s tax rate. For more information see IRS Publication 929, Tax Rules for Children and Dependents.

8. Higher Education Credits Education tax credits can help offset the costs of education. The American Opportunity and the Lifetime Learning Credit are education credits that reduce your federal income tax dollar-for-dollar, unlike a deduction, which reduces your taxable income. For more information see IRS Publication 970, Tax Benefits for Education.

9. Student loan Interest You may be able to deduct interest you pay on a qualified student loan. The deduction is claimed as an adjustment to income so you do not need to itemize your deductions. For more information see IRS Publication 970.

10. Self-employed health insurance deduction If you were self-employed and paid for health insurance, you may be able to deduct any premiums you paid for coverage after March 29, 2010, for any child of yours who was under age 27 at the end of 2010, even if the child was not your dependent. For more information see the IRS website.

The forms and publications on these topics can be found at IRS.gov or by calling 800-TAX-FORM (800-829-3676).

Honest Dialogue

by Ike Nobel, JK Harris Tax Consultant

I had a gentleman visit my office few weeks ago who had returned to JK Harris to contract for our tax resolution services. He met with me about a year ago, but at that time, had opted to try to handle his tax problem on his own. Time passed…fast forward to our meeting a few weeks ago. The gentleman returned to my office after having spent much time trying to handle his tax issue with the IRS on his own – until finally , he reached frustrated, he reached his boiling point and realized it was time to revisit with me to get help through JK Harris.

During the appointment, the client presented me 42 letters he recently received from an IRS office in Oklahoma. He also expressed that his recent contact from the IRS included a visit from an IRS agent to his home in New Jersey, letters from an IRS office in Kansas City regarding a defaulted arrangement, phone calls from an IRS office in Seattle, requests to send documents to the IRS in Fresno, California, and additional requests to forward payments to Andover, MA. He felt completely overwhelmed, until he contracted with JK Harris to help him.

Note: Since this client has just recently contracted with JK Harris, we will post the outcome of his case when his case comes to a close.

Part II: I have received a collection notice from the IRS: Is it a federal tax lien or tax levy? What is the difference?

by Bryan Miller, Tax Analyst, JK Harris and Company

Lien

As the definition implies, a lien is simply a claim to property by securing payment of tax debt if that asset is sold or liquidated. In essence, the IRS makes themselves your primary creditor to the attached property (as opposed to your mortgage or loan company). A lien will not harm most taxpayers other than their credit report. A taxpayer with a federal lien may not be able to attain a loan or credit; otherwise, the lien simply resides on their credit report to govern equity in the property. If the property is sold with at a gain, the tax lien is paid in whole or in part from the gain. If the property is upside down, the taxpayer may request a discharge of the lien to accommodate the sale. See Publication 783 for the form and instructions on a lien discharge, and Publication 4235 on addresses to send the request by region. Also, a temporary subordination of the Federal Tax Lien can be utilized if you are trying to refinance or restructure a mortgage. For more information and the form, see Publication 784.

In some professions where personal credit affects the business or ability to conduct business (such as partners in law firms, real estate developers) the lien can actually cause unforeseen harm. This is not intentional, and for these reasons, the IRS will consider releasing a lien either temporarily or permanently on a case by case basis. See Publication 1450 for instructions and state by state phone numbers to accommodate this process. (Note: The correct form for withdrawal of a lien is Form 12277.

Remedy

The only remedies for liens are those as described above. For a levy, the answer is to begin working with the IRS in either compliance or resolution. Compliance involves filing all outstanding tax returns, forms, or information for which the IRS may be requesting. A taxpayer must be compliant before seeking a final resolution. The IRS will only resolve the entire scope of the taxpayers’ liability, not just one year or another.

Resolution involves either establishing an installment payment plan, or providing the IRS 3 months of current financial information for qualification purposes. All resolution programs with the IRS have to be qualified for your unique circumstance to determine the ability to pay the back tax debt, provide proof that the debt cannot currently be paid (hardship cases), or determine that the debt can be paid but not in full. The IRS will require Collections Information Statement Form 433-A (for individuals and self-employed individuals), Form 433-B (For businesses), or Form 433-F (short form of 433-A used primarily by those with little income and assets, retirees, etc.).

Seeking professional assistance in divulging financial information to the Internal Revenue Service is highly recommended. The IRS will look at current income, expenses, assets, equity, access to cash-value holdings, retirement accounts, as well as go though bank transactions and the sales or disposition of assets and equity over the past few years. Knowing how the IRS interprets these documents and transactions to render a conclusion is imperative in working out the best tax resolution the IRS will accept under the Internal Revenue Code.

For more information and research on federal tax lien help please click here. For more information on federal tax levy program click here.

I have received a collection notice from the IRS: Is it a federal tax lien or tax levy? What is the difference?

Part one of a two part series

by Bryan Miller, Tax Analyst, JK Harris and Company

Enforced Collections

If you have received notices from the IRS regarding a federal tax lien or notice of intent to levy, you may be familiar with the feelings of panic and frustration that follow. Many taxpayers may be aware that they have a tax problem, but it is usually at this point that JK Harris attains many of our clients.

Most taxpayers perceive any correspondence from the IRS as negative and of equal merit. Not all correspondence from the IRS is negative. These notices happen to be quite negative correspondence in the form of a collection activity effort, however, they are certainly not of equal merit. Some taxpayers may confuse these notices, or may be somewhat familiar with one and not the other. However, most taxpayers are completely unfamiliar with IRS enforced collection activity and therefore do not know what to do or how to handle the situation.

Sound familiar? Understanding what a tax lien and a tax levy is, what it means to you as a taxpayer, and what these two notices affect in real day-to-day practice is essential to understanding one of the most feared collection tactics of the IRS.

To begin in short order, a levy is much more severe than a lien. For a definition from the IRS web site:

A levy is a legal seizure of your property to satisfy a tax debt…A lien is a claim used as security for the tax debt, while a levy actually takes the property to satisfy the tax debt.

Levy

A levy may take two forms, but the result is the same: 1) a levy may forfeit property in your possession, or 2) forfeit your rights to certain property that is held by others. This forfeited property will be used to pay down or pay off your back tax debt. Property in your possession may include a home, vehicle, boat, or business assets. Property that is rightfully owned by you but held by others includes: wages (often referred to as a wage garnishment), retirement account, certificate of deposit, money market account, bank account, professional licenses rental income, accounts receivables, 1099 income, commissions, and any cash value instruments such as loan value on life insurance.

Scary stuff, no doubt. But from all of the above, the IRS regularly uses some tactics more than others in everyday practice. Unfortunately, businesses are more susceptible to damage than an individual taxpayer. For example, individual taxpayers are much less likely to have a home or vehicle seized than a business owner to have assets seized.

Liquidating certain business assets is not the same as depriving someone of their primary residence. Even so for the business owner in most cases, the IRS would only look to liquidate excess, or non-essential assets that should not impede business operations. Taxpayers’ homes are usually only seized in cases of fraud or criminal activity. In either case, the IRS sees this as a last resort effort for such extreme measures to be taken.

Seizure of rights to property is much more common, the top two being wage garnishments and bank levies. These are not as damaging overall, yet very effective and attention grabbing, which is the point. Important to note here: the IRS notification process, for any reason, is via mail to the last known address; it is deemed a taxpayer’s responsibility to update the IRS with current information. So even if you do not receive the IRS notice by either mishap or misinformation through the mail, you will certainly take notice when money is frozen in your bank account, or your employer advises that the IRS has attached your wages. This can not only be embarrassing, but cause many residual issues on top of the IRS problems as well.

A real problem may arise here again for the business owner. If the IRS attaches account receivables (those who owe you money needed to run your operations), the account will have to pay the IRS in lieu of paying the business. This can particularly be a problem if the IRS attaches a major account of a business with only a few accounts, or a single account. Subcontractors or 1099 employees with a single employer fall into this category. Also, freezing a business bank account is no different to the IRS than a personal bank account until it is proven that the account is needed to run business operations. Even then, the IRS may only issue a partial levy release to pay necessary expenses while they keep the rest.

Tomorrow, part two of Bryan’s blog will discuss what a tax lien is, how to tell it apart from a tax levy and what the remedy for each situation is.

Does the IRS unfairly target minorities for IRS collections?

In an article posted last month on CNNMoney.com from Fortune magazine, TaxLifeBoat CEO Thomas M. Evans claims the disproportionate number of IRS actions against minorities isn’t intentional. Rather, he charges, it’s the result of overly rigid, highly-automated enforcement policies that waste taxpayer money by pursuing low-earners who either can’t pay, or owe virtually nothing.

While the IRS doesn’t publish information on the ethnicity of those taxpayers it takes collective action against, Evans compared tax lien information with Census data to determine the ethnicity of the taxpayers in the 1,000 zip codes the IRS targeted most heavily with tax liens.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Honest Dialogue

by Debbie Bush, Tax Consultant, JK Harris and Company

I would like to share a touching story I had with a client. I was so grateful to help this client with his IRS tax nightmare; he had carried around this burden for many, many years. This gentleman had been afraid for many years. He was about 75 years old when he came in to see me about a tax debt that he had with the IRS. He started telling me about all the horrible things people had told him might happen to him from losing his home to losing his small checking account -he was afraid the IRS would have him living out in the streets. He had no family to depend on and could not survive if the IRS took what little he had.

After listening to my client, I responded by asking if he had any correspondence from the IRS and he said not for a while but did from years ago. He took out an old, worn wallet and carefully opened it. He took out a worn, folded piece of paper that looked to be very old. He handed me the letter the IRS had sent to him about 15 years ago. He said he had filed all of his tax returns on time, but just could not pay his income tax when it was due because he worked small jobs for other people, he had received 1099 income and was barely getting by on what he brought in.

I looked at the letter, then I looked up at this old, fearful man and told him that he had nothing to worry about. You see, the statute had run out on his tax liability and the IRS could no longer collect from him. He looked shocked when I informed him of this and he started crying. I explained to him, the IRS had only so many years to collect back taxes and his tax debt had expired. He asked me what he owed JK Harris. I said nothing at all and he started crying again. This 75 year old man had been walking around for years, fearful of the IRS. He had been carrying this sense of dread and worry with him for at least 15 years; worried he would lose his home or that the IRS was going to come after him. He gave me a big hug when he left. I’ll always remember this man who never technically was a client of JK Harris, but who I was able to help breathe a sigh of relief. I will never forget him, or the sense of relief he felt on leaving my office.

National Taxpayer Advocate releases annual report to Congress

Last week, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson released her annual report to Congress detailing the need for reform within certain parts of the IRS. Again this year, Ms. Olson has listed the need for tax reform as the number one priority for the IRS. She expressed concern over the IRS’ continued use of tax liens and the lack of alternative collections methods.

Ms. Olson’s report stated more than 1.1 million taxpayers had tax liens filed against them by the IRS in Fiscal Year 2010. Tax liens can be financially devastating to a taxpayer since the lien shows up on their credit report and will linger for seven years after the tax liability is paid. Once a taxpayer has a tax lien on their credit report, it can affect their ability to gain housing (owned or rented), employment, and can affect their ability to get affordable loans and insurance.

In the industry, we have seen an increased number of tax liens being filed and Ms. Olson’s report confirmed it. The NTA report states that tax lien filings have increased 550 percent in the past ten years.

You can view the JK Harris official press release on this issue at Expert Click.

Things to keep in mind when choosing a tax preparer

The IRS sent out its list today of what to look for when choosing a tax preparer. Remember, it is important to choose carefully when you decide to have your returns prepared by a professional. JK Harris offers tax preparation in conjunction with our tax representation services, small business services or as a stand alone service.

If you pay someone to prepare your tax return, the IRS urges you to choose that preparer wisely. Taxpayers are legally responsible for what’s on their tax return even if it is prepared by someone else. So, it is important to choose carefully when hiring an individual or firm to prepare your return. Most return preparers are professional, honest and provide excellent service to their clients.

Here are a few points to keep in mind when choosing someone else to prepare your return:

1. Ask if the preparer is affiliated with a professional organization that provides its members with continuing education and resources and holds them to a code of ethics.New regulations require all paid tax return preparers including attorneys, CPAs and enrolled agents to apply for a Preparer Tax Identification Number — even if they already have one — before preparing any federal tax returns in 2011.

2. Check on the preparer’s history. Check to see if the preparer has a questionable history with the Better Business Bureau and check for any disciplinary actions and licensure status through the state boards of accountancy for certified public accountants; the state bar associations for attorneys; and the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility for enrolled agents.

3. Find out about their service fees. Avoid preparers who base their fee on a percentage of your refund or those who claim they can obtain larger refunds than other preparers.

4. Make sure the tax preparer is accessible. Make sure you will be able to contact the tax preparer after the return has been filed, even after the April due date, in case questions arise.

5. Provide all records and receipts needed to prepare your return. Most reputable preparers will request to see your records and receipts and will ask you multiple questions to determine your total income and your qualifications for expenses, deductions and other items.

6. Never sign a blank return. Avoid tax preparers that ask you to sign a blank tax form.

7. Review the entire return before signing it. Before you sign your tax return, review it and ask questions. Make sure you understand everything and are comfortable with the accuracy of the return before you sign it.

8. Make sure the preparer signs the form and includes their PTIN. A paid preparer must sign the return and include their PTIN as required by law. Although the preparer signs the return, you are responsible for the accuracy of every item on your return.The preparer must also give you a copy of the return.