Can I deal with the IRS myself?

Can I deal with the IRS myself?

There are a few difficulties when dealing with the IRS yourself.

The first is, should you? The problem is that it might not be apparant to you that you have a significant tax problem that requires the skills of a tax lawyer who will be on your side.

Another issue is that the IRS does not have integrated communications and document sharing abilities.  So just becuase you told something to one person at the IRS, does not mean someone else will know what you said.

IRS employees are over-regulated. That is, they have so many rules to follow, they can lose focus of the most important objective. And every day there seems to be yet another rule to follow.

IRS employees represent the government. They are not allowed to give you advice on your best course of action even if they want to (some do break these rules).

The IRS routinely makes mistakes. It is an agency with too much to do, and yet, is now required to do even more now that ObamaCare is the law of the land.

The IRS field offices are understaffed. So that means even if a Revenue Officer wants to accept your alternative, it will take them more time to review and document and properly process your collection alternative.

Some of the most difficult types of agreements to get the IRS to actually accept and process properly are installment agreements! That's right --- just getting a payment plan with the IRS can be a unbelievable ordeal for the layperson --- especially if they owe the IRS over $50,000.