In order to help yourself with any IRS problem, you must emotionally distance yourself from the Internal Revenue Service process.
ALWAYS WRITE DOWN THE NAME GIVEN BY THE PERSON YOU TALK TO, THEIR ID NUMBER, AND THE DATE AND TIME YOU CALLED.
- Identify the issues. It does not matter what you think the issues are it only matters what the IRS thinks. You must contact the IRS to make this determination. When a taxpayer calls the IRS, especially the Collection personnel, the IRS immediately takes control of the call and demands a lot of information under the cover of “protecting your privacy.” In reality they are logging this information in order to take the next collection steps:
- Learning your new address
- Identifying your work and work contact information
- Identifying your pay method, periods, and payday
- Identify your bank
- Identify your spouse and all the above information regarding your spouse.
- Identify the number of people in your household.
All this information will be used against you in collection matters.
- After the IRS has obtained the information above you will be allowed to explain your call. On this first call you only want to know a few things.
- Do you show any years I need to file?
- Do you show that I owe any money?
- Please mail all those years transcripts to me
- If you need to file years, ask the rep to mail the income and withholding on file for each year a return is required. (Later you will have to call your State tax authority to obtain the State withholding by year.
- Ask that a collection hold be placed on your account for 45 days while you get the information required.
- Do not agree to a payment plan or any payments at this time.
- END THE CALL NOW.
- Your task now is to provide the IRS with what they requested on the time schedule requested. You will not talk to the same person twice so keep good records.
- You will get no consideration from the IRS if you do not ask for it.
- You will not be told how best to deal with the issues you discover.
This will get you started on solving your IRS issue.

