What four inches of IRS mail taught me this morning

I'm going to tell you something most people in my business won't tell you, because it makes the whole thing sound less mysterious than they want it to sound.

This morning I sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee and a stack of IRS notices four inches thick. Real notices. Real clients.

Every single one of them was collection mail, sent out right on schedule, right after summer wound down and everybody's guard was up on back-to-school and down on tax problems.

The IRS didn't forget about anybody this summer. It just waited.

Now here's the part I want you to understand, because it's why people hire firms like mine instead of opening the letter themselves and hoping for the best.

When we represent a client, we get copies of these notices too. Sometimes we see them days before the client's own mailbox does.

Sometimes a full week. I'm not telling you that to brag.

I'm telling you because that week is nothing.

That week is the difference between reacting to a problem and getting ahead of it.

Let me tell you about one file in that stack.

We had a client, a good guy, who qualified for something called an Offer in Compromise.

If you don't know what that is, it's the IRS agreeing to settle your debt for less than you owe, based on what you can actually pay. We got him approved. Numbers worked. We were moving.

Then life happened to him, the way it does to all of us.

His family went through something. Without getting into what's his business and not mine, the short version is he was expecting an inheritance, and it didn't come through the way anyone thought it would.

For his family, that was a loss. For him, it changed the math.

Here's what a lot of people don't understand about an Offer in Compromise.

It's not a photograph you take once and file away forever.

It's built on your financial life at one specific moment. Move that moment, and the picture you handed the IRS stops being true.

So we sat down with him and told him what had to happen.

We are going back to the IRS and told them what changed.

Not because we were forced to. Because a resolution built on numbers that no longer exist isn't a resolution at all. It's a delay wearing a nice suit.

That's the job.

Not filing a form once and hoping it holds. Watching the file, catching the moment life shifts, and moving before the IRS moves first.

If you've got a stack of your own sitting somewhere, unopened, you already know what I'm about to say.

Nothing in that stack gets better with time. It just gets more expensive.

Call me directly at 909-570-1103. Or if you'd rather book your own time without picking up the phone, go to and grab a slot that works for you at CallTaxEA.com 

To your survival.

Carlos "The Stack" Samaniego, EA

P.S. That client still gets his resolution. Just not the one we built months ago. The plan that survives isn't the first plan. It's the one somebody's watching closely enough to change the moment your life does.