The CP504 notice is one of the most misunderstood IRS notices. To the average inexperienced taxpayer, the heading can be completely terrifying: “Notice of intent to seize (levy) your property or rights to property.” The next line, appearing in a larger, bold font states “Amount due immediately: $XX,XXX.” Just for good measure, the word “immediately” appears three more times on the first page of the notice. If that weren’t enough, the CP504 often arrives via certified mail, so it cannot be easily ignored.

If you have a healthy heart and you get past the first page without experiencing any serious cardiac symptoms, you’ll notice there are a total of 5 pages of light reading (precise length will vary and will likely increase over time as the IRS discovers creative new ways to torment us). To summarize, you’ll find multiple options for paying in full, including a nifty payment voucher to make paying the IRS as convenient as possible. You’ll see information about how to appeal the actions specified in this letter, as well as information about penalties charged, interest rates, and what will happen if you don’t respond to the notice. The newest addition to the IRS CP504 notice is a paragraph describing the passport revocation provisions of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. This is the legislation that calls for revocation (or denial) of passports where a taxpayer is considered “seriously delinquent” (meaning they owe more than $52k and have not made arrangements with the IRS to pay).

So, what makes this notice so difficult to understand? Let’s go back to the first page. For most red-blooded humans, after they sign for the letter and get it open, there is an immediate emotional reaction to the first couple lines (“Notice of intent to levy” and “Amount due immediately”) that somehow prevents them from reading beyond those horrifying words to see what it all really means. Is this a catch-all “intent to levy” notice? Is the IRS moments away from emptying your bank account or issuing a wage garnishment? Maybe not, actually. The CP504 notice informs you of the government’s intent to levy a very specific asset type: your state tax refund. This is actually explained fully on page three: “In most other situations, before we levy on your property or rights to property [defined as income, bank accounts, personal assets], we’ll send you a notice that gives you the opportunity to request a Collection Due Process hearing, unless you have already received one.”

Now this is where the attorney in me wants to chose my words carefully and my lawyer instincts go on red alert. Please do not misinterpret what I have said in this article. I am not saying that the CP504 certified mail notice is “no big deal.” I am not saying it is not urgent. I am definitely not saying you can ignore it. What I am saying, though, is that in most cases you’ll get another warning (another letter) before the IRS engages in active collections. As you can see, the IRS does not want you to feel too comfortable, so they avoid using completely definitive phrasing in this letter. The fact is there are always exceptions, and sometimes they make mistakes, and sometimes you’ll get a CP504 when you’ve already previously received the more urgent levy warning letter that includes an explanation of your due process rights.

So, while the CP504 certified mail notice is probably not the last notice you’ll receive from the IRS, it’s also not the first. When someone calls because they received a CP504, that tells me there is a little bit of history; it tells me that prior notices have been sent and the tax issues have not been resolved. The silver lining is that I also know we still have time to jump in and fix things. But the window is small, and it closes quickly. If your tax issues are not resolved at this critical stage, your account will undoubtedly end up in the IRS Collections Department, which will present a whole different set of challenges.

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Even though the government shutdown has ended and IRS employees have returned to work, it could be a while before we can say that things are “back to normal.” We are seeing continued delays in both Exams and Collections cases as IRS personnel catch up on their backlog. If you’ve ever returned to work after an unusually long break, you understand how the first several days back are spent putting out fires and giving attention to the most urgent tasks first. If you had been working with a revenue officer prior to the shutdown, and you have not heard from him/her yet, then it is probably because they have put a higher priority on some other cases besides your own. Don’t be offended; we really have no way of knowing what is happening with assignments and caseload on their end. Instead, it would be wise to take inventory and re-evaluate where you are on your end of things.

Every revenue officer I have worked with has given the taxpayer a specific set of tasks or requests, usually having to do with filing missing tax returns and/or providing financial information. This lull in activity from revenue officers is the perfect time to get everything in order. Maybe your due date has long passed and you haven’t heard from your revenue officer in a couple of months. Now is the best time to prepare your case because you can do so without the pressure applied by an overbearing revenue officer. Once the fires have been put out and they pick up your file, you can bet there will be short deadlines and the ever-present threat of levies and other active collection measures. Ideally, the IRS will attempt to reestablish contact with taxpayers first, and possibly set new deadlines. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that there will be some revenue officers who will not do the right thing; they will come back at you with all guns blazing, and their first post-shutdown contact with you will be a levy notice.

It is human nature to procrastinate when faced with a task that we don’t enjoy. And it is human nature to defensively wait for the IRS to come back into contact and put our tax matters aside while things are quiet. But for all we know, this is the calm before the storm. Now is the time to file missing returns, change your withholdings, make an estimated tax payment, gather bank statements, or whatever it is you know you have to do. If you owe back taxes and haven’t heard from the IRS in a couple of months, try to fight off the notion that maybe it will just go away; this kind of thing does not magically go away.

Contact us today with any and all questions you may have. MW Attorneys is happy to offer advice and guidance when it comes to dealing with the IRS.

Google defines “spoof” as a “humorous imitation of something,” or a “trick played on someone as a joke.” But there is nothing funny about the type of spoofing I am about to describe. The tax industry is gathering forces to warn the public about a dangerous tax scheme that involves something called “business email spoofing.” I feel compelled to do my part in spreading the word about this one. As part of this scheme, cybercriminals send an email that appears to come from a high-level executive at the target company to somebody in HR or payroll, asking them for sensitive employee information (most often social security numbers or documents containing social security numbers). This particular scam first appeared last year and we are now seeing a second wave. Enough victims have reported these emails so that the IRS now has examples of the exact phrasing used in some of these spoof emails. It is worth your time to review these phrases, and certainly double check any similar requests coming from the head of your company.

Only a few days after their warning to the business world last month, the IRS released a follow-up alert stating that the spoofing scheme had spread to “other sectors, including school districts, tribal organizations and nonprofits.” The second wave appearing this tax season appears to be more dangerous and more pervasive than what was witnessed last year. First of all, the emails started surfacing earlier in the season this time around. The scheme has spread to new sectors of society; pretty much any organization that collects social security numbers is at risk. And the emails have gotten more bold this time around. Originally the criminals would ask for social security numbers under the guise of high-level management, which would potentially provide a means for illegally obtaining tax refunds (an indirect way of getting paid). Now they are boldly taking a more direct route to the cash by simply asking for a wire transfer. I am sure that most of the time these emails are recognized as spam/phishing, but with just the right wording and in just the right set of circumstances, the cybercriminals are successful.

We have seen variations of this scheme before. Tax scammers posing as representatives of the IRS typically called or emailed individuals asking for financial and identifying information as well as direct payments. But why contact taxpayers one by one when you can hit the jackpot exploiting the vulnerabilities of entire businesses and organizations? That has to be their rationale. I imagine crime rings where the more effective individual scammers are “promoted” to a position where they handle the corporate accounts where both the risks and the potential profits are much greater, but I really have no idea about the structure or sophistication of these criminal organizations. For all I know it could be one or two thugs sitting in their mom’s garage somewhere halfway around the world. It is very frustrating that this kind of thing can go on, but I’ll leave that to the FBI and Criminal Investigation. What goes on in the mind of the victim is also interesting, but I don’t know enough about human behavior to understand why people keep falling for this. We are increasingly comfortable making financial transactions online. Does that familiarity cause us to let our guard down? If it is mostly a matter of people being uninformed, I hope this article helps to spread the word.

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Twice a year the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) puts together a list that they call the “Top 500 Delinquent Taxpayers.” One list comes out in April during tax season, and it is updated in October near the extension deadline. It is a list of the 500 highest state tax liabilities along with the individuals and companies who owe them. The list was last updated on October 14th and can be accessed here. Right now these 500 liabilities add up to around $394 million.

I know I tend to get hung up on semantics (isn’t that what lawyers do?) but I think the title of this list is a bit harsh. The term “delinquent,” when used to describe an individual, almost always has a criminal connotation. The Oxford dictionary, for example, defines the term in this manner: “(typically of a young person) tending to commit crime, particularly minor crime.” Webster’s definition is similar: “doing things that are illegal or immoral.” I don’t know how many taxpayers on this list have been convicted (or even accused) of a crime; I would guess few of them have. As we know, failing to pay all your taxes when they become due, in and of itself, is not a crime.

In tax jargon the term “delinquent” usually means something different. Tax attorneys, accountants, and tax collection agencies typically use this word when referring to overdue payments or past due accounts. When “delinquent” is used to describe an account (rather than a person) then it carries a connotation of tardiness rather than criminality. Therefore, if the FTB must use the term “delinquent,” it really should be used to describe an account rather than a taxpayer. I would be in favor of changing the title of the list to “Top 500 Delinquent Tax Accounts.”

Having said that, these people have been given fair warning. Besides the various preliminary letters and notices, they are given one last chance to clear things up (or at least begin the process) before the top 500 list is published. According to the FTB website:

In August, FTB sent letters to taxpayers scheduled to appear on the list. Of these taxpayers, 96 made arrangements to pay their tax debt. Another 296 individuals and 108 businesses did not pay, resulting in their inclusion on the list.

The FTB states that they have collected more than $582 million through this program since it was started in 2007. I’m not sure how they can tell what part of the revenue they receive is a result of this program and what part would have been paid regardless of inclusion on the list. I would also be interested in studying the unintended consequences of the list, like how, and to what degree, this list has negatively impacted these peoples’ careers. Although, having done a quick Google search, I don’t think the list usually appears in mainstream news outlets. I also researched a few of the top names and I suspect that their reputations have already been tarnished by other financial problems, and their FTB tax debts are just one piece to the puzzle.

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