Audit Defense

At our law firm we represent taxpayers faced with audits from the IRS, Franchise Tax Board and the California State Board of Equalization. Our team of Lawyers and CPA's draws upon over 30+ years of experience in helping taxpayers effectively defend themselves from audits.

If you received a tax examination notice from the IRS, FTB or the CA State Board of Education call us immediately to schedule a consultation. The biggest mistake made by tax payers faced with a tax examination notice is communicating with the revenue agent before consulting an attorney. Auditing agents are specially trained to illicit incriminating statements from the taxpayer, which can later be used against the interest of the taxpayer in criminal proceedings. Only the communications between a taxpayer and his or her attorney are privileged and thus cannot be used against the taxpayer's interest. Hiring a certified tax professional allows you to avoid abuse from a revenue agent and can be instrumental in helping you avoid disclosing to the revenue agent any financial wrongdoings or honest errors. Once you decide to retain my firm, we submit a Power of Attorney form to the tax agency that should instantaneously stop any and all harassing calls or letters from the tax agencies revenue agent. The revenue agent can now only speak to us directly.

Typically an audit can take two forms:

(1) The first could be a "paper audit" in which upon a review of a prior year tax return an error is discovered causing the IRS to bill you more. In these cases, we can assist you in corresponding with the IRS and by providing the necessary documents to the tax agency resolving the matter.

(2) The other type of IRS audit is an in-person audit; in these cases the Auditing agent meets with members of my firm in order to comb through the your books in an attempt to disallow deductions, disallow expenses, uncover unreported income, discover fraud or illegal behavior by the taxpayer. In many instances negative findings by the agent are a result of unsubstantiated or missing documents, which my firm can help you reconstruct and produce these necessary documents.

The process of combing through a taxpayer's documents will often times lead a revenue agent to discover a document that can be misconstrued to cause harm to the taxpayer's case. Should an audit agent discover a potentially damaging issue to your case, you can rely on the trained tax professionals at my firm to effectively explain against any issues that may arise. Failure to address potentially damaging issues can lead the auditing agent to expand the scope of the audit exposing you to more potential tax liability or criminal penalties.

Should an issue arise in the Audit process that that can't fully be explained, my firm has the experience to negotiate with the IRS to arrive at a favorable resolution for you. These include:

(1) Offer and Compromise
(2) Installment Agreement
(3) Penalty Abatement
(4) Reclassification to "currently uncollectable status"

Finally if an agent is unrelenting in accepting our legitimate arguments we can appeal your case to an independent board to hear your case. Tax Appeals boards are often separate and distinct from the revenue officers department and therefore offer a higher degree of objectivity.