A letter from the IRS is a question, not a verdict.

What we can do, and what we honestly cannot

This is the section where a lot of firms are vague. We would rather be exact, because hiring the wrong help for an IRS matter costs you time you may not have.

We can read and explain any notice, retrieve and analyse your IRS transcripts with your written authorisation, reconstruct records, recalculate the liability, prepare amended or missing returns, and draft a complete written response with supporting documentation for you to sign and send. For the large majority of the notices individuals and small businesses receive, that resolves it.

We cannot represent you before the IRS in the general sense. Under Treasury Circular 230, an unenrolled preparer’s limited practice rights extend only to an examination of a return that preparer personally prepared and signed, and only while holding a current Annual Filing Season Program Record of Completion. Those rights do not extend to Appeals, to Collection, or to IRS Counsel. Xelvon is not a CPA firm and nobody here is an attorney or an enrolled agent.

If your matter needs someone with unlimited practice rights — a levy or lien, an offer in compromise, an Appeals conference, anything criminal — we will tell you at the first conversation, not after taking a fee. We will prepare the documentation, reconstruct whatever records are needed, and work alongside the CPA, enrolled agent or tax attorney you engage. The full scope of practice is here.

Do not pay it just because it arrived

An automated notice is a computer flagging a mismatch between your return and something a third party filed. It is not the result of anyone examining your situation, and the calculation behind it routinely omits things in your favour.

The clearest example is a CP2000 for a stock or crypto sale. The broker reports gross proceeds; if cost basis was not reported, the IRS assumes the basis is zero and taxes the entire sale as gain. A $60,000 proceeds figure can generate a five-figure bill on a position that actually broke even. The fix is documentation, not payment.

The same pattern shows up with 1099-K amounts that duplicate income already reported on a 1099-NEC, with retirement rollovers coded as distributions, and with substitute returns the IRS files on your behalf containing no deductions whatsoever. Check first. Then respond.

Penalties are often removable, and asking costs nothing

Penalty and tax are separate questions, and people conflate them. You may genuinely owe the tax and still have the penalty removed entirely.

First-time abatement is administrative relief available to taxpayers with a clean compliance history for the preceding three years who are current on filings and have paid or arranged to pay what is owed. It is not discretionary in the way people assume, and it is routinely granted — but only if someone asks.

Reasonable cause relief covers serious illness, a death in the family, records destroyed by fire or flood, and comparable circumstances outside your control. It turns on the specific facts and how they are documented, which is exactly what a well-drafted request supplies.

Interest is a different matter and is only removed when it accrued on a penalty that has itself been removed, or where the delay was demonstrably the IRS’s own. Anyone promising to make interest disappear generally is not being straight with you.