It used to be that cases with a total aggregate balance of $100,000 or more were worked by a special unit within the IRS called the Large Dollar Unit (LDU).  It has been exceedingly frustrating dealing with LDU over the years.  They tended to ask for every last shred of documentation to substantiate every claimed expense.  And because they required so much documentation, it was never practical to get it over to them by fax (in fact, they would not even allow it).  So the docs had to be mailed in, and they would inevitably get lost.  Or if they did get logged in, they would take forever to look at them.  And if it finally got to the point where a case was nearly ready to be finalized, they would tend to ship it off to a local Revenue Officer to close the deal.  It was like a bad joke: they would string you along for months, then at the last moment, when it looked like we were going to reach a resolution, the case would be transferred to the field.

Well, according to one IRS representative I spoke with today, LDU has been “disbanded.”  That was the word he used, and I kind of liked it.  Now, every $100,000 + case will be transferred directly to a local Revenue Officer.  This is great news for practitioners like myself.  Revenue Officers tend to have more experience and more discretion to be able to close a deal without adding any more red tape than necessary.  Now I guess we will have to see if this in fact a new procedure or just a “flavor of the month.”