IRS Law Blog

You know you owed money to the IRS, but things have been quiet for years.

You now want to know where you stand.

But you don’t want to wake the sleeping giant to find out.

Fortunately, there is a solution:  The IRS Practitioner Priority Service.

The IRS Practitioner Priority Service is a phone line that the IRS has made available to tax professionals, like attorneys and CPAs, to ask questions about their clients’ accounts.

The nice part is that our calls to the IRS Practitioner Priority Service are made “under the IRS radar.”

The IRS representatives that staff the Practitioner Priority Service are not tied in to the IRS collection division.

They are not IRS Revenue Officers.

And they do not work for the IRS Automated Collection Service.

They are there simply to answer our questions, and provide information about our clients’ accounts.

Their job is limited – they take our call, and then move on to the next caller.  They do not have the time – or more importantly, the job description – to do more than help answer questions about your account.

It is low-key, with minimal risk to you.

Here are some of the things we can find out from the IRS Practitioner Priority Service:

• How much longer the IRS to collect the taxes from you.  The IRS has 10 years – the Practitioner Priority Service can tell us the end dates the IRS has in their internal database.

• Determine if the IRS has sent out a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, whether they can levy your wages, accounts, and property, and if you have appeal rights to stop it.

• If the IRS has your account in active collection status or currently uncollectible inactive status.

• If your case has been assigned to the IRS Automated Collection Service, or a local Revenue Officer.

• The last time you filed a tax return, and the information that the IRS has for use in preparing the returns.

• If the IRS has properly applied and processed any payments you have made.

• Exactly how much you owe the IRS, including IRS calculations of interest and penalties, which can double the tax due every five years.

• If your tax liabilities can be discharged in bankruptcy, giving you a clean slate as to the IRS.

When we call the Practitioner Priority Service, we also secure internal IRS transcripts of your account, verifying everything the representative tells us.  This is a back-up verification for your records of what the IRS has on your account.

You don’t have to be in the dark about your IRS tax liability, and you don’t have to fear asking the IRS questions.  The IRS Practitioner Priority Service permits us to learn more, all with a low risk of waking the beast.