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Learn about options for dealing with tax debt and what happens when you can’t pay your taxes. This episode focuses on individuals with tax problems. This week Steve is joined by his long-time colleague Chris Housh. Chris chairs the firm’s tax resolution and business entity compliance practice groups and is the Vice President of the Golden Gate Society of Enrolled Agents.
Listen to the full episode to learn more!
Episode Transcript
Intro:
You’re listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm.
Steve Moskowitz:
Hello everyone. Thank you for tuning into our podcast. We’re really excited to talk to you about this. This is an area that affects so many people and a lot of people get embarrassed about it, or they don’t want to talk about it, but it’s a common problem and there’s so much help. This is what happens when you can’t pay your taxes. And we’re going to do this in two parts. Part one in part two part one is going to be individuals. That’s where we’re going to start. I’d like to introduce my friend and colleague Chris Howes. Chris is an attorney. He’s also an EA and Chris and I have worked together at the firm for over 20 years. Chris heads the department doing these cases, and he’s done thousands and thousands of tens of thousands of these over the past couple of decades. Chris, tell us what happens when you can’t pay your taxes. What do you do?
Chris Housh
Well, there’s a variety of things that we can do, and that’s one of the things I love doing for our clients is finding what’s the right thing for them. I don’t treat it as a cookie cutter situation. There’s the ability to go and try and work with the government. Find the ways to go and figure out what is manageable, reasonable for your budget, and also look at different ways to try and relieve and reduce some of that liability as well. Using elements of timing, elements of what is the important expenses for you and what does the government allow you to do? I play with all that, figure out what the best thing for someone and try and get the best result for someone in those situations.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, there was a word in there that I think everybody want to jump on reduced. Tell us about how do we reduce our taxes?
Chris Housh
Well, first of all, we look and see is it actually the right real liability? Is it that the IRS created a false number for you when they didn’t get your return? If that’s a situation we get the tax return correctly in there reduce the amount that you owe. The other part is we look at whether or not financially, you have the ability to do an offer and compromise. We look at that, is there that financially, you’re never going to be able to pay it in the time that the government it wants so therefore they should accept the lesser amount. Sometimes though, that dollar amount that the government wants to not offer and compromise is too high, but I can use something called statute limitations, how long the government is illegal allowed to collect might make it where making monthly payments over the time they are allowed to collect might make it where you be paid even less than you would’ve done in the offer and compromise.
Then also after you’ve either entered into the install pay agreement or have a base tax paid the original tax from return paid, we can also look at penalty abatement to go and say to the government, let’s remove the penalties due to the events that were outside of your control in the year that the tax return was originally due. From that go and have them reduce out that penalty and also the interest related to penalty, but that part is if you have to go that route, that’s the last piece in the puzzle because the government’s not going to let me go and get rid of the penalty for not paying until you actually start paying. One of the things that a lot of the clients look at is going, oh, I don’t want to start paying until I know the final dollar amount, but strategically we want to go and get the government to understand that you’re cooperating, that you’re making some payments now, and that makes them willing to go and help you out by going and getting things reduced on the other side.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, can you tell us about statute limitations? How long does the government have to collect these taxes?
Chris Housh
With the IRS is that they have 10 years from when they last increased the tax. That means either when the tax return processed, when they created that substitute for return, if your tax return wasn’t actually processed, or if the audit, they get to restart the clock at the end of the audit, but 10 years from that time, now there’s a couple different things that can accidentally move the clock forward a little bit, but 10 years is a good thumb to nail to use of going and saying, here’s the amount of time that they’re going to have. In that situation, I might do offering compromise in analysis and go, this person has a ton of equity in their retirement account or in their home, but only little bit of money every month available to pay towards their debt.
If it’s at that small amount and they only have four years left, I can save them a lot of money going that route instead of going and trying to figure out how to go and have them access the equity in that house. We want to play with that. I end up having tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in a couple years, even millions of dollars drop off for our clients through the using the statute limitations to that advantage.
Steve Moskowitz:
That’s really terrific. I think our viewers and our listeners are really happy to know that sometimes the time itself you can cut a deal and the number just go away and speaking about going away, what happens when these taxes go away? Do they ever come back and haunt us?
Chris Housh
Once the statute limitations has expired, it is gone. The IRS can no longer click on that penalty or on that interest. I should make a quick caveat. Each state has its own statute limitations. California is 20 years double the amount of the IRS. Some states have crazy bizarre ones like New York actually has that if they remember to send you a letter, they restarted the clock. State taxes still have that option, but we have to do a different analysis.
Now, can the liability come back after it’s been wiped out? Only if the government can prove that something was done fraudulently, they have to show that you intentionally misled them and did something. I’ve yet to run across it in my actual practice in over 20 years, but there is that little carve out that they have that you manage to hide $1 million from them. They might figure out how to go and then restart the collection for that $1 million that you hid.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, has it been your experience that sometimes you have to remind the government that the statute limitations has run or otherwise they might keep collecting?
Chris Housh
Yes. In fact, actually during the pandemic, that actually has been the biggest amount of time that I’ve had to do it. In the past, it would be maybe occasional that the computer was off by a couple months and I would be going in, or there was a split assessment where the IRS forgot to go and tie the wife’s account to the husbands and therefore they had different times listed. But during the pandemic, the com IRS computer has actually been off frequently where I’m having to call in because they’ve gotten two or three months of additional payments. Once I can to them that the statute limitations was expired, but the computer still collected money. Those additional payments get refunded back to the taxpayer with interest for the amount of time the government held onto it.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, can you tell us the grounds for getting an offering cover? It sounds great because it, essentially, what you’re telling us is that you only pay part and the government forgive your arrears. What are the grounds to get the offer?
Chris Housh
So there are three kinds of offering compromise that exist with the IRS; doubt as to collectibility doubt as to liability, and then effective tax administration. I’ll start with the one in the middle, doubt as to liability. That’s where you go and say to the IRS ‘You have the number wrong.’ What you want to do is then show them, you have to put all the documentation together and say, ‘Here’s what the correct amount is and that I’ve actually calculated your tax and interest and penalty for you government. Here’s what it should be.’ The thing is that the IRS wants you to first try and do that through the audit reconsideration unit, before you go to the offering compromise unit. It’s an option, but they prefer that you go the other route of challenging the tax through the regular routes before you go to the offering compromise unit.
Steve Moskowitz:
So that’s a benefit to the client going to somebody experienced like you to know then not to fall into those pitfalls? But if we do have to go ahead and do this, could multi billionaire go ahead and use this.
Chris Housh
If it’s that you absolutely had where the tax is incorrectly computed, yes. It doesn’t matter how much money you have for a doubt to liability to go and do that. In fact, it’s actually easier for that multi-millionaire because one of the conditions you’re doing is saying that if the IRS agrees with me, I’m immediately paying the money that is what I’ve calculated is what’s being owed. The multi-millionaire can afford to go and pay the correct tax with the penalty and interest at the end of that route.
Steve Moskowitz:
What if the tax is correct and you’re not a multimillionaire, then what do we do?
Chris Housh
That’s when we want to go and do the other two; doubt as to collectibility or effective tax administration. Doubt as to collectibility is the most common of these offering compromises. That is where is based on math formulas. We have to go and run elements to go and say, here is what your average income is, your necessary expenses that you need to go and be able to survive and to keep your business going. Also a couple of other elements. Then tie that also into what is available in your equity of elements of your bank account, your retirement account, your car, your house, there’s math formulas of what the government will accept. They have me run first, the calculation of this against the statute of limitations.
How long does the government get, get to collect? I have to run that number then against how long they have plus add in your equity and go and say, okay, based on this, would they ever be able to collect all the money? If I can prove to them that they’re never going to collect it all in the time they’re allowed to collect, then they go and let me do a second calculation to say for this small portion that is equal to one year of your discretionary income, based on the IRS calculations and available equity in assets, math formula don’t want to bore you guys with how to calculate it. But it’s a-
Steve Moskowitz:
Not boring when you’re saving all that money.
Chris Housh
… it’s not boring when you’re saving, but that said, nobody likes to hear a long algebra equation. That’s what it would end up sounding like if I told you, but we do it all day long, I can actually usually do the analysis once we put everything into our form, I can figure out a potential offer amount in just a matter of minutes and then advise whether or not it’s the best option for you. With that, they’ll let you have equal to one year of what you have. That’s not as income that is not needed for paying your necessary expenses plus available equity and that’s not down a little bit by certain percentages and that’s all you have to pay. Now, the thing is that you then have to be able to come up with if once you and the IRS agree, and it’s going to be a couple months of back and forth going and arguing about what that dollar amount is.
But once you’ve reached the agreement, then you get a certain window of time, a few months to go and finish paying that in full. They ask you to put in 20% of what you’re offering at the beginning, just so that they know that you’re serious, but then you have that timeframe. Then they wipe out the remainder of the liability. It used to be that they would keep your refund for the first year after you got the draw for accepted, they just changed that in November 2021, to say that you’re now allowed to… You’d actually have your refunds start going to you once your offer is accepted.
Steve Moskowitz:
If we’re doing an offer, do we have to come up with all the money upfront or could even pay that in monthly installments?
Chris Housh
Is that you have to come up with 20% of your offer in compromise to get the good offer in compromise.
Steve Moskowitz:
What about the other 80%?
Chris Housh
The other 80%? After acceptance. Now let’s say the 20% is something that you feel you can’t really do. They do offer you a different route, which is to go and say that you’ll do monthly payments on your offer amount. I don’t really recommend that because what you’re doing instead is taking your offer out and divided into 24 but you’re also increasing your offer amount by equal to two years, instead of one year of discretionary income, and you have to pay it every month. And then when IRS goes and argues with you and says, oh, no, no, no, you actually could afford $300 more per month. You have to actually come up with the equivalent of those extra $300 per month of the time that they’ve been going and debating. If you’re nine months in all of a sudden that extra $300, you got to come up with $2,700 in a short window of time, I prefer doing the 20% at the beginning 80% at acceptance because it’s easier in the middle of a negotiation to make up whatever difference you need to do and keep everything alive.
Steve Moskowitz:
Do you find a lot of times that maybe friends or relatives help the taxpayer out and that’s how everybody’s better off?
Chris Housh
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Steve Moskowitz:
How does that work?
Chris Housh
Well, one of the questions that is actually on the application is, if we accept this how are you going to pay it? The typical answer is help from friends and family. Borrow money from friends or, and family. Because here’s the thing. If you add the money ahead of time, while you’re still being evaluated, and you have that in your bank account, you now have additional available equity. You actually almost accidentally doubled what IRS going to ask for at the end of the day. There is no penalty for going into asking the friend or family member to help pay once the offer is accepted or to help you go and get that 20% first deposit in and the IRS expects you to do it. That actually works out best in that situation.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, explain, how does it work if you have equity in a house and you want to do this?
Chris Housh
If you have equity in the house, what we have to do is part of the math formula. If you have the equity, what the IRS asks me to do is say what the fair market value is. Usually we use Zillow, but there are other ways of getting a fair market value. Then reduce it down to 80%. From that, then I subtract your mortgage loan as it currently stands. The government will ask me to provide a copy of the most recent mortgage statement. The difference between the 80% of your fair market value and how much mortgage you have left is what the IRS is going to calculate as being part of what you can afford to pay as your offer.
Steve Moskowitz:
What happens if the IRS is more interested in my house and they try to take it, how do you prevent that?
Chris Housh
Well, first of all, they have to go through a lot of steps if they’re going to try and take your house. At this point, luckily in 20 years of me doing this, I’ve had them threaten to try going after a house a few times, none of my clients have lost their house over this.
Steve Moskowitz:
That’s fantastic.
Chris Housh
What happens is there is an actual code section that says that the IRS cannot go after your primary residence, unless they can prove that it’s the only way that all other avenues have been exhausted, then they can try and go after your house. That’s if it’s your primary house. We instruct them that we’re going to fight them tooth and nail, make it where you have lots of conversations with the manager, maybe even ratcheted up to higher levels and threaten them. That’s one of the things that’s actually a benefit of being an attorney is I can threaten them by saying that I know that they have to go to a court and tell a district court judge, that this is the only way that they’re going to be able to go and collect on the taxes. Therefore, I will be in front of that judge explaining why that’s not true, that you do want to actually participate, that you are trying to get an installment agreement. That the house is not the only way to get paid. Therefore, that the judge should not allow the IRS to take it.
Steve Moskowitz:
Well, Chris, what happened if we have a situation where the taxpayer says, you know what? I want to do this and take some money out of the house, but the bank won’t let me touch anything in the house because you put a taxing on me. What do you do now?
Chris Housh
Okay. In a situation where you are trying to do a refinance or sell the house and there is the lien, there are specifics procedures that are out there to go and actually attack the lien. Now one of them is the lien subordination. That is where you go in and say, ‘Hey look, I’m taking another loan. It’s not going to be enough to pay off the lien. Therefore IRS, I’ll let you take this much of what I’m getting out the loan please, give the rest.’ It takes us a little bit of time pre-pandemic. It would be that was maybe a eight week negotiation. Sometimes I could get it done in four, but nowadays you almost want double the amount of time until the IRS gets themselves back in the normal timeframe. With that, you have to have the name of the lender that’s going to work with you.
You got to have very spoken to the bank and have someone working with you. But once you do, we fill out the applications, give this point in documentation is a six page request to the IRS plus the supporting documents. Then they work with us. Have the discussions. Now the thing is that you’re going to have to expect that IRS is going to want to be the person that gets the majority of the extra money as opposed to you. That might be part of, is asking for what can have loan is going to be enough that it gets you what you want plus a little bit of extra for the government to go and relieve that. The IRA says, Yes. They take their lien off literally for the day that the loan is funding so that the bank can put their lien in front the next day, the IRS puts theirs right back on.
That becomes one of the biggest battles because it’s actually more than arguing about the money, it’s arguing between the bank of what’s the day that they’re going to close escrow and the IRS saying, yes, this is the day that they’re going to do everything, because the bank wants to get the verification that it will happen and the IRS won’t give the paperwork until they know the escrow date. I end up spending about two days in negotiation, just trying to get the bank and the IRS to agree on the date that it is going to happen. It ends up being more headache than the actual real negotiation about the dollars.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, what happens when somebody comes in the door and says, look, he owes taxes and he is got a really good credit score, but the IRS is threatening if he doesn’t pay up and he can’t, they’re going to put a tax lien on him. What does that do to his credit score? And is there some way to avoid that?
Chris Housh
Well, what it does to the credit score has been changing over time. The credit reporting agencies are claiming that they don’t use that as evaluation in the scores anymore. That said, we all know the reality is you go out to try and get that loan or that credit card after the lien is out there, they are going to jack up the interest rate that you get. We do try to keep ahead of the IRS or the state on when they’re going to file the lien. They are required to give you a warning letter before they’re actually going to issue it. We want to pounce during that 30 days that you have between the warning letter and the day that they’re actually going to do it, I can file paperwork to the IRS to go and force them into what’s called a collection due process hearing, which is saying, Hey, the lien should not be able to go in until I’ve had an official discussion with an IRS appeals officer about what kind of arrangements we should put in place.
The thing is that the IRS does have where the computer will automatically issue the lien, even with an installment payment agreement, if the liability’s more than $50,000, or if you’re not going to be able to pay off the amount you owe within five years in that arrangement. It becomes a little bit of a tight rope walk to go and try and keep that lien off, but it is able to be done and then becomes that situation of looking at the individual’s situation. It may work perfectly for one person, but somebody else might not be able to afford it and then you go, ‘Okay, which one do you want to have? Do you want to go ahead and let the Lien go on, but have it where you don’t have to worry about the government doing anything worse or do you want to go and do the elements to go and stop the lien from happening?’
Maybe make a larger pay payment upfront to make it where you have smaller payments and that you’ve gotten under that threshold. Otherwise, the IRS does say have one other little element out there where I can say there will be an actual harm to the ability to get money in the future. If the lien is actually put in place, but they have a pretty high standard there, you have to really feel like that you’re your employer will not allow you to have your job if the lien happens. That usually happens for banking industry, securities, stock exchange, that element we can get the lien pulled off because the person will not actually be able to make money if the lien happens. But otherwise the IRS will say that they don’t see the harm in the lean outside of that is a public claim out there. That becomes a hard battle and they are becoming more and more harsh about that. It becomes where? Instead I look at what can I do to get you under the threshold so they don’t issue that lien automatically.
Steve Moskowitz:
What happens if a person comes in the door and says, Chris I’ve been with the IRS and that agent is really tough and they think they’re really unreasonable. Is that agent the last word judge, jury and executioner? What happens?
Chris Housh
Well, first thing I want to do is find out who that agent is that they’ve been talking to and how long have they been talking with that person? Can I undo a little bit of what’s happened. Especially I have good relationships with most of the revenue officers in the Bay Area, if and those that are new, that I haven’t built that reputation with yet. I know their managers from back when their managers were working as a regular collector. I’m going to go and use my street with them to go and try and bridge the gap, calm the sea a little bit as one of the first steps. But is it that the revenue officer is the last word? No. The good part with the revenue officer, is that at least I have one person I’m talking to majority of the time, but I can talk to their manager who, again, usually I know because of having done this for so long and using that part to sooth things over to saying here’s what they could do.
Here’s what they could not do. Here’s where they went over a little astray. Now that said, if that doesn’t work, there’s the regional district manage that oversee things. There’s also if our thing that’s it we’re going to levy and the levy was done inappropriately. I have something called a collection appeal process that allows me to go and stop the action long enough to go and have a higher up appeals officer review the paperwork, the file of that revenue officer to say whether or not they did things correctly. While that’s pending, I’m still talking to the manager, still talking to the revenue officer to go and try and smooth the sea again and try and figure out what we can do for getting an actual arrangement that doesn’t involve the levy. There are routes to go on that I’ll double check if they file the proper paperwork to allow them to do a levy. If they haven’t, I’ll remind them, they have to do that.
Then file request of a collection due process hearing to force an appeals officer independent to talk to them. Now that said the collection due process hearing had a change happened in the last two years. It used to be that they were completely independent. The last two years, there was a wonderful decision out of Washington, D.C. I said with sarcasm, but the decision was that they should let some of the review of the collection paperwork if it hasn’t been reviewed by a revenue officer before, they’re now sending that financial statement to the revenue officer to do the initial recalculations that the appeals officer then has to decide to stick with or go against.
There are still a little elements that you have to have in play. That’s why I don’t take a burn, the bridge approach. It’s you got to go and work with the elements and that’s how you’re going to get the best negotiation, but we’re able to come in. We’re able to say, Hey, we know the rules. We know what is and is not allowed on their side where our fight should be and let’s actually negotiate to reach that happy middle ground.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, you mentioned earlier penalties, how large can penalties get?
Chris Housh
Well, the worst case scenario penalties for a standard person, I’ll start with that.
Steve Moskowitz:
Standard.
Chris Housh
Standard, is that for late filing penalty, it starts off at 5%, goes up another 5% each month until it has the ceiling of 25% of the amount of tax that was not paid on original return. Finally, late payment penalty starts at 5%, goes up half a percent every month until it hits 25%. In that scenario, just with those two alone, you have 50% of what you owed on the tax becoming penalty. That’s that you’re having to deal with. That’s not counting the interest. The failure to make estimated tax payments can be an additional penalty that’s thrown on there. Now, if you have results from audits, potential negligence penalty added onto that can be 10% or 20% based on how high your adjustment was on the audit. Let’s say you had a negligence late filing and late payment penalty, all hit the ceiling. That can be 75% of the tax you originally owed that you having added on as penalty.
Steve Moskowitz:
Have you ever seen cases where the penalties and interest were actually more than the tax itself?
Chris Housh
State of California. Not the federal one, but the state. Yes, I have actually had people that had refunds on the tax return that they were filing, but because state of California does their penalty based on the calculation of tax before your withholding or any payments you made, I’ve actually had a client owe over $1000 on a tax return, that if they filed on time, they would’ve had a refund. In that situation, again, you go in, you have to go and ask for that abatement. Unfortunately, California makes you pay it first and then ask for a refund and they owe you interest on it when they refunded back. But you have to explain why you couldn’t do this on time.
Steve Moskowitz:
Obviously it would be really great to have the penalties forgiven. What’s the grounds. How do you get penalties forgiven?
Chris Housh
Basically, the most essential element is going in saying here are the events that happened that were outside of my control. Was there a health issue for yourself or immediate family? Was there a natural disaster that happened in this area? We’ve been using the fires in the North Bay, a lot to go and be able to get these things abated.
Even major emotional crisis elements, divorce, death in the family, addiction and having to go and get treatment. The government looks to those kind of things where you’re having to deal with life in those elements. Now, the other issue is that I have to make a request for each year separately, independently. We know in reality, you’re dealing with this problem for multiple years, but the government likes to treat it as if you could figure out how to fix the universe and get back to paying taxes in one year. What we do is we file a separate request for each year and we tailor each year’s letter. Each year’s request to go and reflect the timeframe we’re requesting. I go and send out the letters at different times so that they potentially go to different people’s desks.
The one thing that is most often wanted by the client to go and have as the reason for penalty abatement that the government will say no to is something about the economy. If it was that your business was struggling, unfortunately the government doesn’t abate the penalty for that because they say that their first response is we only tax you on your profit and that you should have put aside that part of the profit or if it was the overall economy that other people figured out how to deal with it. That’s why we have to dig deeper into what is your personal? What was your universe that was happening at that moment to really bring it out? The IRS and FTB will look at it to go and do that. The IRS does have a heart it’s just hidden in a windowless room in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Steve Moskowitz:
What happens if somebody walks in the door and say, look, ‘I owe the taxes, but I just lost my job or my business is going really poorly. Could you get me some time to just get on my feet and then go ahead and I’ll deal with it?’ Is that possible?
Chris Housh
Absolutely the technical term for it is hardship deferral, or currently non-collectible status. That’s one of the elements that we do for clients all the time is going and say, okay, we’re going to show the history of the last three months, show them your financial situation. Here’s your bills. Here’s what money you have coming in that you’re tapping into things and they can grant you at the IRS level up to two years to get yourself back on your feet. They ask you to continue to file your taxes on time, try and pay the new taxes on time, but they’ll allow you that time to not have to pay the back taxes. Interest will go during that time, but they’ll allow you to get back on your feet. State of California goes six months to a year. One of the things on the timing of that is if you just lost the job last week or even last month, during that time, instead, what you want to do is keep asking the government for holds, because you need to give them three months of documentation.
If you are on your first month of unemployment, the government uses two months of when you were working as part of their calculation. I wanted to go and get that time extended forward, make it where all the documents show the time that you’re unemployed. Of course during that time, I’m hoping that you get your new job before the three months happen, but I’ll be ready to go and then get the government to go and give you a permanent situation at that at the end of that. Even if you gain that job a month after I got that hardship, deferral, the government, doesn’t come back and say, ‘Oh, you now have the job. We’re going to change it.’ They have agreed to give you that time. That allows you to then make voluntary payments when you’re actually back on your feet.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris you’ve given us such great information and you given so many people hope of things to do. Is there anything else that our listeners should know about?
Chris Housh
Yes. There is always a way to go and try and manage the elements. One of the things that I do for our clients is when I’m reviewing the amount of time the government has to collect on liabilities. When you’re not in a payment agreement, yet you have the ability to direct the government on where you want to have that payment applied. One, I come up with strategies. Sometimes if you have liabilities, one that’s five years old, and one that’s only a year old, I’ll have you pay that one year off before it has a chance to get very much interest growing on it and allow the other year to go and get closer to when it’s going to expire, having elements like that, knowing how to play these different parts of our chess game.
I enjoy playing that game of going and seeing what’s going to be your best strategy? What’s going to save you the most money? That’s one of the elements that having someone that’s going to learn, what is important to you and look at your whole situation is something I always recommend to someone as you’re looking for someone to help you through this. That’s part of our strategies is to go and say, what makes it where you get to keep doing what’s important to you as you don’t have to go and worry about throwing out the important part of your life to just to pay a tax liability. The other thing is I always recommend against accessing a retirement account to try and pay off the tax liabilities or selling off something major because you then owe taxes on what you just sold and or what money you took out the retirement account. I never want someone to owe new taxes for trying to solve their old taxes.
Steve Moskowitz:
Because that be a situation where the person would continue to do it every year until they had nothing in the last year, they still couldn’t pay the taxes.
Chris Housh
Exactly. You’re stuck on a hamster wheel running and not getting anywhere. When I have a government agent try and push to go and get into that retirement account to sell off those stock, that’s the one of the things I immediately remind them of is we don’t want them on the hamster wheel. We don’t want our client to go and end up owing more taxes from trying to solve their tax problem. We’ve had so many people walk in the door that’s what happened to them. They’ve sold off everything, the payoff year one, and we’re paying it in year four and now they have a giant liability from page year four and it’s year seven that they’re trying to, that they’re coming to us, stopping the hamster wheel, making the where you can get yourself back on track is what is important in these kind of situations.
Steve Moskowitz:
Chris, I know we could go on all day with this, but we’re about out of time. Thank you so much for explaining all this to us and that’s Chris Howes. Now stay tuned or come back for part two when we’re going, talking about what happens when a business can’t pay their taxes. Thanks, and we look forward to hearing, or you can call us at 888TaxDeal. That’s 888T-A-X D-E-A-L or Moskowitzllp.com M-O-S-K-O-W-I-T-ZLLP.com. Speak to Chris, speak to me or any other of our colleagues. Thanks so much. And we’ll look forward to talking to you on the business taxes.
Outro:
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