Tax Resolution Services,Co. How to Waste $7,500 and 2 Years Encino California

Financial hardship and my own stupidity caused me to end up owing IRS $90,000. The huge stress of this situation is undescribable! I was a sitting duck for the radio ads of Tax Resolution Sercices which invites you to allow them and their "experts, former IRS agents, and people with inside knowledge" to get you out of your mess. The ads were read by people I respected and trusted. They wouldn't deal with false advertising, would they?

I contacted TRS and received the "warm & fuzzy" sales pitch assuring me that I had a good chance of success if I paid them $7,500 and let them handle the problem. I explained that I didn't have $7,500. Not to worry, can you come up with $2,500 now and pay $500 monthly? I talked it over with my wife and we figured if we delayed the house payment and tightened the budget we could barely come up with the money. We sent them $2,500 and signed the papers. TRS sent questionaires, and Powers of Attorney forms (we ended up giving POAs to at least 10 people at TRS) which we filled out. Initially we got the feeling that we were on the road to resolving everything when in actuality TRS was stringing us along until we had paid them the entire $7,500. Looking back, I can see that they had nearly zero contact with IRS.

TRS then filed the paperwork for an Offer in Compromise, offering to pay $100 to settle my $90,000 debt. IRS then began requesting (thru TRS) more information about our finances. I responded to these requests immediately. Although TRS never sent me copies of the forms, I assumed that the reams of data I sent was being forwarded to IRS. At this point, we were coming up on one year with TRS. I was getting suspicious then because TRS was requesting documents which I had already sent. The person assigned to my account was also failing to respond to my questions.

I was beginning to see evidence that I was only one of a large number of accounts which she was handling because she was unable to remember details which we had covered many times. For the next 6 months I received a monthly email from her that we were waiting to hear from IRS. At that point I received a copy of corespondence from IRS stating that an agent had been assigned to my case and that I needed to resend all data because what they had was too old. What??? Again I sent hundreds of pages of new data to TRS. Back to waiting and my monthly email from TRS. 

Around 18 months into this ordeal I get a copy of the filled in forms which had been completed by TRS using the data I had sent to them. I was shocked to see how poorly this was done! It failed to list many of my expenses and did not reflect my financial position at all. Of course they denied the Offer in Compromise. At this point I had spent 18 months and $7,500 and my $90,000 bill was now $96,000. But, don't worry, IRS usually denies the first offer. We will request an Appeal.

A month later I get a certified letter from IRS with a copy to TRS giving a date for our Appeals Conference. They want to do a teleconference and request data that proves/disputes the info on their forms. The data is STILL very incorrect! I am now totally drained. I want to see if TRS is even paying attention, so I wait to hear from them regarding the notification which they received via certified mail. I do not hear a word from TRS and on the day  given by IRS to respond, I make the decision to go it alone. I call the very nice gentleman at IRS assigned to my case and have a long conversation.

I requested a face to face meeting and told him that TRS is out of the picture now. At the meeting I bring in all my data and we sit there and go through everything in detail. He had a few documents which was the total of everything TRS had provided him with. Hardly any of the reams of data I had sent and resent and re-resent had ever reached IRS and the forms which TRS had filled out were wrong. He told me he would contact me the following day with a decision.

As promised, he called me the next day and told me that I did not qualify for an Offer in Compromise and that TRS should have known this. He said that I had spent my money chasing a remedy which by law was never an option for me. Instead, he placed my debt into "uncollectable status". IRS will simply drop all collection efforts.

Epilog: Tax Resolution Services never responded to the letter from IRS. two months later they did contact me about a letter they had received regarding my state taxes. At that time I told them that they had ignored the IRS letter and that I took care of the matter myself. What, you talked to IRS??? That violates your agreement with us and cancels our contract with you! I then contacted the state agency and learned that the situation with them was identical. TRS had ignored phone calls and emails from them and they never received the info I had sent to TRS.

I can find very little that I got for the $7,500 I paid to TAX Resolution Services. Their marketing preys on the fear of the IRS. I was so afraid that I was willing to believe that a company on the opposite side of the country could do a better job of dealing with the IRS by email than I could do myself if I only had the courage. Keep your money, or use it to help pay your debt, don't give it to this bunch of Jackals.