How to defeat IRS penalties

Okay. You made a mistake. You failed to file a tax return or didn’t pay the government what you owed.

The result? The IRS hit you with an expensive penalty.

Does this mean you’re out of luck and have to fork over a lot of cash?

Not necessarily! If you know how to use the IRS’s “first-time abatement procedure,” you can very possibly get the penalty waived.

We’ll tell you how to put the recently-changed procedure to work for you when you read my new article titled Q&A: Changes to IRS First-Time Penalty Abatement.

Three ways our fact-filled article can help you:

1. We’ll tell you how the old rules worked. Under the prior rules, this abatement relief applied to a tax period if no “significant” penalties were assessed in the prior three tax years. This means, that theoretically, you could get a first-time abatement for multiple years if each single year met this three-year rule. We’ll give you the whole story when you read the full article.
2. You’ll learn how the new rules work. The IRS has made it clear that first-time abatement really means “first-time.” It applies to only one tax-period per taxpayer per return-type. In addition, the preceding three-year period must now be 100-percent penalty-free (except for the estimated tax penalty). All will be explained when you read the full article.
3. We’ll explain two additional changes as well. You should know about both these two smaller changes: (1) You can’t get a first-time abatement for tax years ending before January 1, 2001. (2) For Form 941 penalties, if multiple quarters in a year qualify, the first-time abatement only applies to the earliest quarter. You’ll get more detailed information when you read the full article.