When a client of our's is able to pay the taxes that he/she owes in a payment plan or by full paying or nearly full paying the debt, we will always discuss the possibility of penalty abatement with that client. We handle about 50 to 75 of these penalty abatement cases for clients per year. So, we would say that we have a finger on the pulse of the division of the IRS that handles these cases.

And...we would say that the tendency of the IRS is toward REJECTING penalty abatements -- even the good cases. Why is this happening? Has the culture of the IRS changed? Our guess is there was a directive from higher up in the IRS hierarchy to put penalty abatement requests under greater scrutiny.

The good news is we are winning these cases in the APPEALS division of the IRS. The key to penalty abatements is establishing "reasonable cause" to explain why you fell behind on your taxes or filed late: divorce, sickness, e.g. fall into this category, and providing tangible proof that the event occurred.

TODAY: we got the IRS to remove a $15,000 LATE FILING PENALTY ABATEMENT AGAINST A CLIENT!!! This was one of the most difficult APPEALS that we have ever done. We will say after several exchanges of paperwork with the appeals office, it took a final CONFERENCE CALL with our client to get the result.

Here are some other penalty abatement posts/stories of our's:

Client's Acknowledgement Letter - Successful Penalty Abatement
$99,000 Penalty Abatement Awarded to Client

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