When a person begins their search for someone to be their tax advocate for them to deal with an IRS problem, they should look to hire a professional firm that is in private practice who employs Enrolled Agents. The value of having an Enrolled Agent represent someone with an IRS problem is because an Enrolled Agent knows the process and procedures at the IRS. That has a tremendous benefit for the person who has the IRS problem because the Enrolled Agent knows how to cut through some of the red tape at the Internal Revenue Service. Thus, it is extremely important for people to have professional representation in regards to the IRS matters that they face so they can better ensure that they will get the best possible outcome with the IRS.
If a person finds themselves faced with needing help to deal with an IRS problem, they should really resist the temptation to use free services such as The National Taxpayers Advocate Service which claims to be “your voice at the IRS.” Although the intentions and philosophy of this tax advocate service are good with a true intent to help people with IRS problems, people might just find themselves dealing with a bureaucracy as challenging as the Internal Revenue Service itself. The National Service is described on the IRS website as an independent organization within the IRS. Thus; someone has to ask themselves this question: how independent can they truly be if they exist within the IRS? The words “within the IRS” should clearly steer someone away from the National Service. The direction for which people need to take in order to resolve an IRS problem is to find a truly independent tax advocate with a professional firm in private practice who has Enrolled Agents.
The National Taxpayers Advocate Service does good things, but representing people before the IRS is probably not one of those things. Like many things at the Internal Revenue Service, a person must qualify to get their help. A person must also have already tried to resolve their problems with the IRS first before they might be eligible to use the tax advocate service. When someone has an IRS problem, it becomes pretty clear that their time, effort and money are better spent by hiring a private practice professional as opposed to using a bureaucracy inside of another bureaucracy. In fairness to the National Service, it is important to point out that they do some good things. One of the really good things that they do resides in their annual report to Congress. This annual report to Congress generally details the challenges that the American public faces with the IRS and their experiences in dealing with the IRS.
One of the best supporting claims that really emphasizes the importance of having someone to represent a person to the IRS instead of a person handling their problem on their own is found in one of the annual reports to Congress by the Tax Advocate. They report that people who had representation “fared substantially better than others without representation.” That sums it up right there, saying that people should get professional representation when they face a problem with the IRS.