Vol 30, No. 6, #7. Internal Revenue Service Office of Practitioner Liaison: 2007 Annual Meeting.

• Author: Author: Christopher M. Reimer

Wyoming Bar Journal

2007.

Vol 30, No. 6, #7.

Internal Revenue Service Office of Practitioner Liaison: 2007 Annual Meeting

Wyoming Bar JournalVol 30, No. 6, #7Issue: December, 2007Author: Christopher M. ReimerInternal Revenue Service Office of Practitioner Liaison: 2007 Annual MeetingSince 2005, Tom Long and I have served as the representatives of the Wyoming State Bar in front of the Internal Revenue Service Office of Stakeholder Liaison. The Stakeholder Liaison Office was created in 2005 by the IRS to facilitate communication with organizations whose professional members represent small business and self-employed taxpayers, including the Wyoming State Bar.

On November 7, 2007, the IRS held a Wyoming Practitioner Liaison Meeting in Cheyenne. The morning session included a presentation from Sharon Eckberg from the Stakeholder Liaison office in Billings, Montana. She discussed the recent efforts by the IRS to ease the rules with respect to late filed "S" elections and the issuance of Rev. Proc. 2007-62. That ruling provides a simplified method for requesting late "S" election relief by permitting taxpayers to file their late "S" election along with their first "S" corporation tax return.

Marilyn Bodwell, a collections revenue officer from Fort Collins, Colorado, discussed the general procedure of a collections case before it is assigned to an actual person inside the IRS. Typically, before a revenue officer is assigned to a case, the taxpayer will already have undergone receipt of automatically mailed notices and demands for payment through the Automated Collection System (ACS). Once an actual revenue officer is assigned, she discussed how the officer typically tries to facilitate an installment agreement prior to actually levying property. National standards have recently changed with respect to qualification for installment agreements. Recently out of pocket medical expenses have been averaged and incorporated into the IRS collection financial standards.

Ms. Bodwell also discussed how taxpayers can request a collections due process (CDP) hearing prior to a seizure of property by the IRS. If a taxpayer fails to make a timely CDP claim, the IRS has procedures for an "equivalency" hearing, which allows a taxpayer an opportunity to speak with a hearing officer even if he/she failed to timely make the CDP hearing request.

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