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Correcting Overstated Tax Debts and/or Filing Amended Tax Returns

Correcting Overstated Assessments:
It is not only sloppy preparers that miscalculate tax balances owed. Sadly, amounts calculated by the federal and state taxing authorities are often times overstated.

In cases where a taxpayer doesn't file a tax return, the federal and state governments will sometimes make estimated calculations. These calculations generally do not consider any exemptions, deductions, adjustments, credits or sometimes even tax payments on account that may benefit the taxpayer and so they commonly overstate the true tax, penalty and interest balances owed. Our firm can get these government overstatements down to the proper amounts after preparing and filing your original tax returns for the periods in question.

Amended Tax Returns:
Our firm takes the necessary steps to be sure that your tax returns are as complete and accurate as possible. In addition to carefully reviewing the tax information that you bring to us, we also take several other steps to help you avoid potential problems and to maximize tax savings. Among those common extras are the following:

• Annual income summaries are obtained and referenced (when available) through the taxing authorities so we know what W-2s, 1099s, etc. have been reported under your identification numbers;
• An extensive interview is conducted to be sure that business bookkeeping or expense summaries do not omit valid deductions, such as amounts paid by cash or amounts that can be substantiated with alternative forms of documentation instead of receipts; and
• A careful checklist is followed to confirm that we have asked you all of the reasonable questions about possible exemptions, downward adjustments to income, itemized deductions, non-refundable credits and refundable credits.

Unfortunately, many other tax preparers do not follow these same important steps. We commonly encounter errors made by careless or uninformed preparers and in many instances the opportunity to correct them is still available. When errors are discovered by our firm we generally do the work to get them corrected, so long as the benefit to our client is large enough to make the correction worthwhile and the assessment and/or refund statutes are still open. Generally, a tax return can be amended within three years of its original filing date and a refund can be claimed within two years of the date of an overpayment (certain restrictions do apply to these general criteria).

If you need help getting an IRS overstatement reduced, contact our office for help.