December 10, 2010 - Phil Hodgen
The IRS is pulling out the sledge hammer.
For cases where the IRS is trying to get documents from the taxpayer — unsuccessfully, in the IRS’s eyes — they have a simple procedure:
- Send you an IDR (“Information Document Request” for those of you not subjected to this process).
- You don’t provide the documents.
- They look at your three-pager letter that you gave to Criminal Investigations when you entered the amnesty program. In that letter you checked a box for the range in which aggregate balance for unreported accounts fell.
- They take the top end of the range.
- They send you a Closing Agreement assessing a penalty of 20% of the top end of the range.
I’m not sure about the effect of them merely sending out a Closing Agreement. We shall see, I guess.
Keep working away. Me personally I think the IRS is totally unrealistic in many cases about the paperwork involved. They could have closed out 80% of the cases six months ago with a bit of management foresight.