The IRS could be visiting your business very soon! The IRS is working to ensure more businesses and individuals pay their taxes by scheduling in-person visits by revenue officers. The effort has started recently in Wisconsin and will continue in Texas and Arkansas.
The IRS hopes that this effort will work to resolve tax compliance issues by meeting face-to-face with taxpayers who have ongoing tax issues, including those that currently have payroll tax issues. The IRS plans to focus its efforts in areas where there are a limited number of revenue officers available. The areas of focus are also where the IRS has little to no presence for taxpayers. The program will supplement the IRS’s Private Debt Collection program. That program allows contracted collection agencies to contact taxpayers who owe longstanding tax debts.
Darren Guillot, deputy commissioner of collection and operations support in the IRS’s Small Business/Self-Employed (SB/SE) Division, says “these new visits that we’re doing outside involve teams of revenue officers traveling to locations where we have reduced resources or no resources to visit higher-risk cases involving larger balances due and cases that have needed visits from a revenue officer for some time, in some cases years.” One of the main focuses of the visits will be unremitted payroll taxes. Guillot says that most of the cases are business owners who are withholding large amounts of employment taxes from their employees and not sending them to the U.S. Treasury. The individual cases, Guillot says, are going to be “the higher-dollar, more complex cases.” The taxpayers and business owners that are visited have been contacted multiple times already by the IRS. The visits may be unannounced, but the taxpayer should already have knowledge of the past-due taxes. It is not uncommon for Revenue Officers to visit taxpayer’s homes or businesses when they owe a large tax debt. This is usually to see if the client has money to pay the IRS and what the financial situation is.
If you owe money to the IRS and need someone to represent you against a revenue officer, Polston Tax can help. Our team of tax attorneys work every day to protect our clients against collection action and unfair assessments. You can schedule a free consultation today by calling us at 844-841-9857 or by clicking below.
