Hiring a Tax Professional -- Is Location Important?

Our company, Washington Tax Services, is based in Seattle, Washington. We have four Enrolled Agents on staff, one CPA and one attorney. The Enrolled Agent's license is granted by the IRS and gives the tax professional the ability to practice in all 50 states. We help people from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Tampa, Florida to Presque Isle, Maine. We have 20 years of legitimate experience to draw from.

When is local better? The only time that I would recommend a local tax professional over Washington Tax Services is when a TON of bookkeeping (and I mean a ton of bookkeeping is going to be necessary to make Profit and Loss Statements). For the record, we have taken on many cases like this: it just requires shipments via UPS usually.

Local, however, is often worst. A company that advertises on TV whoses corporate offices are in South Carolina gives people the wrong impression that that they are local. When in actuality, their firm has temporary offices in strip malls around the country staffed by SALESPEOPLE. I have heard that many of these fly-by-night offices are no longer in existence, stranding hundreds of customers.

Our Database of IRS Revenue Officers

Not to oversell Washington Tax Services, but another rare thing we have here is a database of IRS Revenue Officers compiled over twenty years of doing cases. This database is helpful when you can't find your Revenue Officer and your situation is an emergency. In those moments, we can access other people in the IRS office.

Who Practices before the IRS?

There are three licenses to practice before the IRS:

1. Attorney
2. Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
3. Enrolled Agent (EA).

I have the third license, E.A.. The important question is : of these three licenses, which training truly prepares and educates one for dealing with the IRS collection branch? Actually NONE of them!

Knowledge of the IRS collection branch comes to one through experience ONLY. I am proud of my Enrolled Agent's license and my education in the nuances of the IRS code. However, I would have to be honest that it is the eleven years of handling cases at Washington Tax that have provided me with the know-how to handle IRS collection's cases.

When shopping for tax representation, the license to practice is important, but just as significant is one's experience handling collection's cases?

Here's two humdingers of questions to separate the experienced from the novices:

Does filing a return to replace a substitute-for-return change the statute of limitations?

NO

Are personal taxes potentially dischargeable in bankruptcy? YES

If a professional answers either of these questions wrong, keep shopping.