Overview

Statistics for fiscal year 2021 show the IRS

• has a balance of assessed tax, penalties and interest exceeding $133 trillion,
• continues to engage in enforcement activity involving more than 500,000 taxpayers, and
• monitors almost 4 million taxpayers paying tax liabilities under installment agreements.

Although, the IRS suspended the automatic mailing of collection notices routinely sent when a taxpayer owes federal tax on February 5, 2022 to give the IRS an opportunity to clear its processing backlogs, use of such automatic mailings is likely to recur and, meanwhile, other IRS delinquent collection activities continue unabated.

With IRS collection efforts clearly continuing and likely to ramp up in the future as a result of the budget increase included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, tax professionals need to be conversant with IRS collection activities and the methods available to challenge them.

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

• Identify the rights specified in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights;
• Describe the maximum period of time the IRS may collect taxes due from a taxpayer;
• List the tax payment alternatives available to a taxpayer;
• Recognize the IRS decisions that may be challenged by a taxpayer; and
• Compare the Collection Due Process and Collection Appeals Program.