Radio Interview (May 30, 2024)

00:00
We now say good morning to Steven Klitzner, IRS attorney, and back with us this morning. Hi, Steve, how are you? Well, good morning, Michael, doing good. Good, good. So, Law Office of Steven Klitzner,

00:10
PA, tax attorney, FloridaTaxSolvers .com online is where you find help there, 305 -682 -1118 is the local phone number Steven practicing in Miami and South Florida and the Florida keys as well.

00:27
So, Steve, in addition to other things we can talk about, let’s talk about scams. I talk with the sheriff every week on the air and it seems like there’s always a press release warning citizens about scams.

00:39
They’re impersonating police officers. They’re claiming people have to show up for jury duty or bail someone out of jail. And they’re also getting calls that claim to be coming r s right and and this is something that’s been going on a while as a matter of fact the commissioner of the irs got one of these scam phone calls you owe the irs money we’re going to bring the police out to your house if you don’t give us

01:07
an itunes gift card or target gift card on the phone some of times they want you to stay on the phone and not talk as you go over and get a gift card to read them the number.

01:19
And people fall for this. I had a criminal lawyer call me who I know, and I said, “You represent criminals. How do you not realize this is a scam?” I had a friend of mine call for Miami Beach.

01:33
He’s well connected in Miami Beach, and I told him it was a scam. But just in case, he called the Miami Beach Police Department, who he knew, and he had them come out to his house.

01:45
And I’m thinking, so if another police department comes to your house, there’s going to be a shootout. It made no sense at all. And I had one gentleman force me to hire him to get his transcripts because he was so convinced it was real and it wasn’t.

02:05
Well people are, you know, they get emotionally charged, I’m sure that the scam callers are very good at what they do, but yes, they are very convincing. So the IRS will not be calling taxpayers demanding money,

02:18
gift cards, etc., in that regard, right? They never make first contact by telephone. Years ago they did. As a matter of fact, I had a guy who, the auditor,

02:30
made the first contact by phone on the day of his anniversary. He thought it was a scam. He cursed her out and hung up on her. She later understood when I explained to her why he did that,

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but you’ll never hear from the IRS for the first time by a phone call. Steven Klitzner with us, available at 305 -682 -1118, floridattacksolvers .com,

02:53
talking today about scams where those scammers are posing as IRS agents trying to collect money from you. So if the IRS is not going to make first contact by phone,

03:06
we’ve talked about how they will make contact repeatedly by mail and that’s something that should not be ignored. Do they use email though? No, they don’t. They don’t because it’s not secure.

03:17
So if you get an email saying it’s the IRS, Which by the way, there’s some scam rule that these emails have to be grammatically wrong and have misspelled words But these are scams.

03:29
Also, you will never get an email from the IRS Ignore those. Yeah, it’s usually pretty Pretty obvious that well English is a second language at best with some of these unfortunately But the IRS does not scam in this way by using email,

03:45
they don’t contact by calling taxpayers. So first contact, I mentioned it, but is it universally done by a letter by US Mail? – It is now.

03:56
In 2023, the IRS, when a revenue officer was assigned the case, they go out to the business, they go out to the home. But for reasons such as taxpayers pulling guns on them,

04:09
they decided this might not be a good idea. So since 2023, first contact will always be by mail. It’ll set an appointment, which doesn’t mean that’s the day you have to be there,

04:22
but it means you need to contact them back. But even if they send the case because the IRS uses private debt collection agencies, if they’re ever going to refer your case to a debt collection agency you will first get a letter from the i r _s before you get a letter from the debt company and that’s a good point so i assume that there are also instances where a collection agency may be contacting the taxpayer but

04:50
it is not a legitimate that either right unless the iris tells you and send you a letter saying returning this over to the state which by the way Here’s a little known secret.

05:02
When they turn it over to a private debt collection agency, they’ve basically given up on the debt. And these agencies have no power to levy. They can’t take your things. All they can do is work a deal.

05:14
So generally, when I’m on the case and I get them, I want them to stay on the case. I don’t want them sending it back to the IRS, but I never make a deal with them. I never give them any information.

05:26
I just let them hang around for as long as they want to hang around. In the meantime, the ten -year statute of limitations for the IRS to collect is running. So,

05:36
I was just going to say, Steven, at that point then is the debt erased basically after the ten -year or is there some kind of a record that follows a taxpayer beyond that?

05:47
No. After ten years, it goes away. Now there are things that taxpayers do during that 10 years to protect their rights. That will extend the statute somewhat.

05:58
But after 10 years, if the IRS doesn’t sue, which they don’t usually do, then the debt goes away. And every year, my clients save millions of dollars with the statute of limitations.

06:11
I take credit for it, of course, but it’s not me. All I did was weight them out, and then the debt goes away. – Yeah, well, we’ve been speaking with Steven Klitzner. He is the law officer of Steven Klitzner PA,

06:23
tax attorney, also known as FloridaTaxSolvers .com, online at FloridaTaxSolvers .com, and locally, phone number 305 -682 -1118.

06:34
So you’ve been practicing tax law for over 40 years, Steven, and you even have served on the advisory Council and Committee for the IRS. So you’ve seen some changes over the years in terms of how the IRS operates.

06:46
I sure have, and the good thing is that they generally make an announcement before they’re going to do something new. They don’t usually do things out of the blue. Unfortunately,

06:58
sometimes they do, they make an announcement, then they don’t follow through on it. It’s very inconsistent, but Because all I do is deal with IRS problems,

07:08
I’ve got a pretty good finger on their pulse and I know pretty much what they’re going to do and when they’re going to do it. And right now, they are gearing up. In the last few months,

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they have been starting to send out letters that they hadn’t sent since before COVID. And now they’re beginning collection action and it’s just up to taxpayers when they first hear from the IRS to protect their rights,

07:33
because many of the letters come with rights that will expire if you don’t act on them. That’s what you have to be careful on. Well,

07:43
knowledge is power, and it’s certainly a very complex issue, so we appreciate you giving us insight. Again, it is FloridaTaxSolvers .com online. Steven Klitzner, tax attorney, 305 -682 -1118.

08:08
a contact from the IRS, what is the first thing that someone should do to protect those rights? Well, you know, I’m a big advocate of never talking to the IRS and having someone contact them for you have a representative contact them and the reason is is you don’t really know what they’re asking or and you will never it’s just like if you get stopped by a police officer for running a red light very rarely going to

08:36
talk them out of it if they came to give you a ticket they’re giving you a ticket and it’s the same with the irs you’re not going to be able to straighten things out with them on the phone, and you have to be very careful.

08:47
I have a client now where his wife and he talked to the Revenue Officer, and they said some things and created so much confusion that I think the Revenue Officer thinks they’re laundering money.

09:01
They’re not, but why they talked to the IRS and why they explained all these things to them, I have absolutely no idea, but they just made more trouble for themselves.

09:12
Well, Steven, we talked about, again, we started out talking about scams, and I assume some scammers made contact victims, claiming that they’re gonna be subject to wage garnishments and other kinds of levies,

09:24
et cetera. What is a wage garnishment? And if it does occur, well, what’s a good way to avoid it, but then explain a wage garnishment the i r _s you know what happens is that that that’s usually when the i r _s is frustrating you have a local revenue officer you break your promises to him you’re not contacting them you’re ignoring them and in order to get your attention more often than not it’s just get your

09:53
retention they grab your bank accounts they levy your wages so that instead of you getting paid You get very little money and they get the majority of your paycheck.

10:03
But as a general rule, they do that to get your attention so that you do what you have to do. Very often, unless there’s an extreme circumstance, we can get the levy removed with the understanding,

10:17
“Okay, now we’re going to cooperate. We’re going to give you our financial information. We’re going to file all our returns and we can work a deal because they’ll always work a deal for the past stuff as long as you’re staying current now and going forward.

10:34
So it’s interesting too and I was just looking at your website FloridaTaxSolvers.com and there’s a lot of processes and a lot of steps that lead up to a wage garnishment.

10:46
There’s what it looks like five at least five different notices that should be, you know, sent to the taxpayer. Unfortunately a lot of taxpayers may tend to just,

10:57
you know, ignore them. That first letter and that first point in contact is really when they need to contact you. There’s no question. And the first letter is not going to come certified. Okay.

11:09
But the real important letters other than that first letter are going to come certified. and the reason they come certified if they contain right and they want to make sure you’ve received that letter if you’re going to lose those right after thirty days or ninety days which depending on which the letter is so be very careful because them just sending it and you were certified mail counts as you received now so but if

11:37
you moved etc you never receive it uh… Are they able to still proceed with a levy or a garnishment? It depends. If that’s your last known address, if that’s the address on your last tax return,

11:37
you moved etc you never receive it uh… Are they able to still proceed with a levy or a garnishment? It depends. If that’s your last known address, if that’s the address on your last tax return,

11:49
it could count against you. If you change the address, if they send it to the wrong address, that’s okay. But they’re pretty careful at doing that, so if you move,

12:01
you want them to know where you’re going because when they find you it may be too late and they will find you so you never want to hide you always want to change your address because if there’s an important letter you want to see it.

12:15
Steven Klitzner with us Law Office of Steven Klitzner PA tax attorney very experienced very qualified and your best asset if you are contacted by the That’s the phone number for an appointment with Steven himself to get help with your IRS problems.

12:36
So give us an update, Steven, on the what was it, 87 ,000 potential IRS agents we’re always interested to find out if that has moved forward. Right,

12:46
and they aren’t all agents. There’s people answering the phones. There’s people doing IT. There’s maintenance people. But we have seen here in South Florida brand new revenue officers those are the collectors we get we see new revenue officers that i see a new one every week and uh…

13:05
they are and they’re making up mostly for the people that are retired or moving up or transferring but we still have more than we’ve had in the last several years it’s still not enough that for them they really need a lot more.

13:20
But there are more and more, we’re seeing more revenue agents doing audits than we have over the last few years. So they are ramping up, they are beefing up because the IRS is the only income producing entity of the federal government.

13:36
Without the IRS, without taxes, they’re getting no money. And I know they come under fire with Congress a lot, they do a lot of things that could themselves in trouble, but the bottom line is the government needs the IRS and they need them to collect.

13:51
That’s why they gave them more money and that’s why they gave them more people they could hire. So now that the tax deadline has passed, is it safe to assume that the focus shifts more to audits?

14:04
No, there’s still a lot of collection work. They have three years to audit, so usually if something’s more than three years ago they’re not looking at it but we see a lot of audits this time of year and a lot of collections when a revenue officer closes out a case there’s another case in the queue ready for he or she to pick up and start making contact and you never know who’s going to get a revenue officer

14:29
generally they’re bigger cases but i have many cases with revenue officers with for the taxpayers $50 ,000. It’s unusual, but it happens.

14:53
Well, that’s one big red flag to avoid. Any other red flags as far as audits we’ve mentioned before, but give us a recap as far as some ways to maybe, is there a way to minimize your chance of being audited,

15:06
you know, going forward? Really, I think the best way is to invest in a CPA and enrolled agents a good tax preparer to do your return because if their items on there were suddenly,

15:23
you’re getting a huge refund or Suddenly, there’s things on there that are really not true. You have a very good chance of getting audited, and if that preparer prepares a lot of returns like that,

15:35
they’re going to get audited, and all their people will then get audited. So go to somebody, spend the time, spend a little extra money, have it done right, there’s no magic formula,

15:46
no one can get you back money, you’re not entitled to. And if you go to somebody and you do the return right, the chances of being audited are very, very slim. Steven Klitzner,

15:57
Law Office of Steven Klitzner, Tax Attorney, FloridaTaxSolvers.com, 305 -682 -1118. This brings to mind another question. Your tax preparer,

16:08
if they make mistakes or errors either intentionally or not, are they then liable to the IRS or do they have disability for the tax indebtedness that they may have caused the taxpayer well all they can do i mean the iris can slap them with penalties for not doing everything in their due diligence but the bottom line is taxpayers responsible if the taxes are wrong you’ve got to pay the taxes you gotta pay the penalty

16:34
you gotta pay the interest sometimes we can get rid of the penalty because they relied on it on a bad preparer but you know for the most part when you get audited you’re paying what you should have paid in the first place plus interest plus penalty and it could end up being a lot more than it would have been otherwise so just be very careful with that because if it does look too good to be true I have a

17:00
gentleman he got he’s a truck driver he got this huge fuel tax credit back like $60 $60 ,000. It’s a fake. The preparer prepared it,

17:10
charged him a lot of money for it, and now the preparer’s disappeared, and he’s on the hook to pay all that money back, plus extras. Be careful. Sometimes you have to be careful if you use one of those software products,

17:25
too, because you don’t want to double dip. You don’t want to put in things that look complicated that you’re not entitled to, but very often you’re better off using one of those programs than going to a scam preparer who’s just going to make things up and get you back money you’re not entitled to.

17:44
Well we started off this segment by talking about scams that some of the taxpayers are victims of, but let’s also talk about some of those claims that people may hear that on 1 -800 -NUMBER,

17:56
call it and your tax problems will go away, your penalties and interests will be forgiven under these new programs, etc., etc. Maybe that’s not necessarily a scam, but you use the word unscrupulous with tax preparers.

18:10
There are also those who are unscrupulous, hard word to say, regarding tax relief and tax retro -inhabitation, right? Yeah,

18:21
I get a phone call every day. I use this company in Colorado. I use this company in California. They’ve represented me for years. Nothing’s been done.

18:31
The IRS just levied my paycheck. They just took my bank account, and they’re charging me every single month. They’ll charge them $1 ,000 a month until the case is over.

18:42
They never resolved the case. They’re good at making the money they’re not good at resolving the case and think about this if you have a local revenue officer working on the case do you think he or she has any respect for some mystery person across the country the answer is no and you know you want someone that deals with them all the time and works with them all the time not somebody’s going to make you these wild

19:08
promises because they’re on commission and if you sign up, you’ll never hear from them again, they’ll sign the case to someone in the back room who may be there for two weeks,

19:20
four weeks, they may quit next month and they have nobody over there representing you. So most of the problem with those companies is most of their money, most of their resources go into the advertising and answering the call.

19:33
Very little of their is going to actually working on your taste, which is why you hired them. Well, you had mentioned earlier too, Steven, that the IRS even in South Florida has new revenue agents,

19:46
but they quickly get to know you because you’re constantly in contact with the field offices and those who maybe they replaced as new agents or, you know,

19:56
again, you know also the playbook of the IRS and how it all operates, and that’s invaluable. – Yeah, it is. I had a revenue officer who was new. I was talking to a while back,

20:09
and I was making conversations. I said, “Are you new?” She said, “I’m not gonna tell you.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “Then you’ll take advantage of me.” I said, “No, I’m not.” But she knew me,

20:21
I didn’t know her yet, because You know, it’s just like anywhere else. They talk about this representative, that representative, so they know who they’re dealing with.

20:32
So you have to have that reputation of not only being truthful and honest, but aggressively representing your client’s rights.

20:42
And they know I’m not going to let them have something they’re not entitled to. But I’m going to treat them fairly. I’m not going to lie to them. I’m not going to ignore them.

20:56
I’m going to make the best deal for my client. I never want my client to make a deal that sets them up for failure. The IRS wants them to pay $2 ,000 a month.

21:07
They’re not going to be able to pay that. Why are we going to make a deal like that? He can pay $500 a month, and I have to convince them that that’s what they should take. – Steven Klitzner,

21:18
Law Office of Steven Klitzner, Tax Attorney, FloridaTaxSolvers.com, South Florida and the Florida Keys, available at 305 -682 -1118.

21:29
So we’ve covered a lot of ground here, Steven. Is there anything we should highlight though at this time that we didn’t talk about yet? – No, I think that’s it. It’s always great talking to you, Michael. And If any of your listeners have any questions,

21:43
my consultation is always free. If I can help them, I’ll tell them here’s my flat fee and I’ll take care of your problem. If it’s something that I can just tell them what to do, most of the time,

21:53
they really need me. But there’s often times people call and it’s like, you know what? You don’t need me. It doesn’t make sense to hire me. Here’s what you do and you can take care of the problem easily.

22:04
So consultation is free and I’m always happy to talk to people. Well, Well, I find this a fascinating subject. Everybody is supposed to pay taxes. Some people don’t and they find themselves in trouble as a result.

22:15
Some people just are victims of a mistake or something overlooked or something. It doesn’t make them a bad person just because they have now a problem with the IRS,

22:26
but you can help them through that process and they’ll get to sleep at night again. So again, 305 -682 -1118. Steven Klitzner, tax attorney,

22:36
believe me, his expertise will benefit you greatly should you find yourself in need of IRS representation. Get it and get help from that very first letter. So Steven,

22:47
thank you so much for being here and we will talk again soon. Sounds great. Have a great day, Michael. Yes, sir. You do the same. Take care. It is floridataxsolvers.com, again, 305 -682 -1118.

23:00
Steven Klitzner can talk to him personally, free consultation should you find yourself in need or have IRS problems or questions. It is, what time is it? It’s 8 .40 now,

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keys talk, 969 -1025, the talk of the keys and we will return in just a moment.