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Leaha Crawford and Rhonda Nolen are business consultants that discuss the current struggles of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Each episode covers steps necessary for smaller businesses and business owners to grow and prosper.
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You're listening to locally produced programming created in
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KU NBC Studios on public radio K, u and v. 91.5. The following is a paid program sponsored by Crawford management group and smart time consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you hear did not represent the views of 91.5 Jazz anymore the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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Hi, my name is Leah Crawford. And I'm Rhonda Nolan and you're listening to the let's talk with Leah and Rhonda show for all the beautiful entrepreneurs out there. This is for us. Good morning Las Vegas and Happy Happy, Happy New Year. How are you doing this morning Leah? Hey Miss Rhonda is what seats what seat? Or is it game so Vance when he 24 January,
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February, and what I want to tell y'all is everybody if you see Rhonda I'll say happy birthday. As the month of January we kickoff around his birthday. Just say happy birthday. If you see you're out and about you happen to run into or just say happy birthday. Her birthday is all ma it's all month I'm taking all breakfast, lunch and dinner date. So you know might be a call all my mom. So tax season taxi taxis and is here we are ready to rock and roll. So I am Lea Crawford, owner of profit Management Group. Taxes is what we do what we do so we do business taxes, personal taxes. We do IRS tax resolution. And I want to delve into that today. Okay, talk about it because because of the pandemic, and a whole lot of other things. A lot of people have a lot of IRS debt. Right. So our team and I've got one of our team members here Mr. Larry clerics. Hey, Larry. Hey, Rhonda, how's it going? Fantastic. So good. My birthday is tomorrow, by the way. Happy birthday to you too. Wow. happy early birthday. Last month. So one day is Monday. Monday is plenty for you. Okay, so, Larry,
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why don't want to Team expanded our team because now we are really pushing offers and compromises. Okay, we do tax resolution. We've been doing that. But just the offer and compromise. And I wanted to bring him on a day so he can talk about his experience. You know, he was an IRS agent. Well, I'ma let him tell the story. So Larry, welcome to the show. Thanks very much. Pleasure being here. Pleasure being here. So Larry, tell us a little bit about yourself. I worked for IRS after completing my military obligation, and some other jobs. In the meantime,
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I was working for the IRS back in Buffalo, New York. I joined them in 1987.
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And I stayed there till the end of 1993. At which time I decided there were it was better for me personally and professionally, to be self employed. So I've been doing this offer and compromise work since January of 94, January of 94. So 30 years doing the offering compromise work. During that period of time, as I say I was self employed. And I settled about 375 offers. Last I counted. And if you add up all the money that I saved for my clients during that period is about $25,000,000.20 $5 million. So I am ecstatic excited to have him as part of our team. If you have a tax liability, you have some text Dec 702-382-5737. Again, 702-382-5737. Or if you're looking for a new tax preparer you want someone that's going to take the time and really understand what your situation is. This is what we do. And we take our time with everybody's a VIP client. As always say Matt, just everybody's a VIP. We're in Vegas, right? Everybody's VIP, that's right. Everybody's VIP because we take the time energy me Brenda Jin Now Larry, and we're ready to rock and roll the tax season. But Larry, let's talk about these offering compromises but we we've had an extensive conversation about them.
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Why would someone wants to do an offering compromise? Well, first of all, you owe the IRS a bunch of money. Now regardless of the amount, we will be happy to discuss with you your options. There are several options to pay IRS. The most common one that people think of right away is I can't afford this. Let me just get on a payment plan. Now
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Have that has a built in problem with it, you can be on a payment plan with IRS and you calculate how long it's going to take you to pay off this debt, you're probably wrong. The IRS continues to charge penalty and interest during the whole time that you're paying them your monthly, monthly bill. So your installment agreement is going to go on for what seems like forever. And I don't know the exact amount, but a long term, IRS will probably default, my guess would be 90% of the time, you can't make payments for emergency might come up who knows plenty of reasons for missing a payment. So the better solution is not to go with this payment plan rather to look at an offer and compromise. Now the offering compromise.
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Once you get the offer accepted all the paperwork turned into IRS, you will get an acceptance letter. And lately these offers and compromise have been taking about eight months to a little over a year to get a resolution. Now once you get that resolution, IRS has accepted your offer to pay X amount of dollars. At that point in time, you've paid off IRS, you've saved a hopefully a boatload of money by paying them off. Now you've got to be very careful at this point. Because you promise to pay them a certain dollar amount within five months of receiving that acceptance letter.
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Do not even think about saying well, I'm finished with IRS now. I'm just going to kick back and the heck with them. But it's not going to work. As a matter of fact, I got a letter just the other day. One of my clients in Florida, old $95,000 When we got the offer settled for $20 here, that's now let me stop there y'all so $95,000 got settled for $20. Okay, so when I have questions, shoot, okay, so so your client owed $95,000, you got an offer of 20 settlement of $20. Correct. You needed to pay that like within 24 hours. And then between five months, he had to pay the $20 $20 was in five months when he but but but here's the kicker, though, was because the kicker is once you get an offer and compromise, I'm gonna let Larry explain I know it. But I'm let Larry, Larry, tell me tell me about his lair I need to know about I need to know about Sure.
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Return the offer in and you dictate your terms how much I'm going to pay over what period of time they give you up to 24 months to pay what you offer.
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I never recommend that to people because you want to settle with IRS as quickly as possible. You don't want it to drag on for another two years. So the most common way to pay IRS is you give them 20% upfront, that's not your choice. That's an IRS charges you $205 For the let's say privilege of submitting an offering compromise. And they charge 20% upfront of what you've offered. The remaining 80% You pay within five months of receiving that acceptance letter. Okay. So if it takes you five months to come up with 20 bucks, God bless you. Well, most people say when I get the acceptance letter, I'm gonna send them a money order, right that very day, right, and they do most of the time. Now there's one other issue.
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And that is you have to stay fully compliant with IRS tax law for the next five years. You cannot skip filing a tax return. And if you do fail one, the bottom line shows a balance owed, then you have to make sure you send a check for full payment and would that tax return, failing to file or failing to pay over that five year period, which is what I was just telling you about with that letter I got, they will issue you a letter saying hey, go back and look at the terms of the installment agreement. We see you didn't file a tax return for 2022 Because you didn't do this. We are defaulting our acceptance of the offer. And you are back to owing $95,000 like you used to. So and what I want to say is the reason why we bought him on a team is our team is good about follow up. So once the offer is accepted, and we know the offer is accepted, we're going to hold your hand through it. We want to make sure that that whatever you owe is paid in a timely manner but also to follow up to make sure that your taxes are filed and you are paid for the next five years. That means having hard conversations we need to do something different. We probably need to pay an estimated tax if you are self employed. If you are working for someone we need to increase the tax withheld. Just
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Just to make sure over five years and this year is 2023. So if we get the offer accepted this year, we're talking about you got to be compliant 20 420-526-2728. And at 28, then you're done with that offer and compromise, you're now in compliance, you've built a habit of paying this bill. And we're off to a new start. So it steps to this. And what I love about our team is that we are committed to making sure that once we get you the offer, because it's not just the offer, so we're not just seeing this offer is following through, following up and then even doing a follow up to the follow up to ensure that that bill doesn't come back, because that's huge. Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. Because now you default. And now you got to pay now to 95, then whatever you owe on the next year, and then whatever, and then you can't file for another offer and compromise on top of that, right. Or can you layer Yeah, they will let you do another offer and compromise as of right now. And I've heard rumors to the contrary, but as of right now, you can keep on submitting offers and compromise. But then you got to come back because in order for us to do it again, we got to go back and we got to redo everything again. Exactly right. You're starting from scratch. You heard a rumor that they weren't going to do it, but that's why I like having people around me that know. Right? So that we can so you're listening to the let's talk with Leah and Rhonda show. I am Lea Crawford. I am Rhonda Nolan. And we are so happy to be here with you on this beautiful bright, brisk Saturday morning. But you will know Rhonda, I'm your side note. Before we get into the tax things. I know it's tax season. I walked this week, three miles. That's one three whole mob I am so excited even did a yoga thing and got on the peloton. I just
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moved what I had to do was move to another room. And I had to act like I was born somewhere. Right? I get fully dressed to walk to the you know, to the room with the Pelotonia. Right. And you know, maybe stop at the kitchen and get some, you know, some water or something. But I had to make it my mind think we're going somewhere, right? You know, because the minute I told you my yoga studio clothes. Oh, that's remember I told you that because of the yoga, the yoga studio was born to close. But let's delve back into it.
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Offering compromise. So I want to say to you, if you if you have a tax liability if you know someone that possibly has a tax liability, because IRS just doesn't send one letter, they send two, three letters at the same time. And it can be overwhelming it can be you know, basically you get num. You don't want to open them they stack up they pile up. It's not going anywhere. Right? It's not going anywhere
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due to work 702-382-5737 Again, 702-382-5737. So Larry, we're talking about you have you have resolved $25 million in tax liability with about 375 offers? Well, we're about to blow that number out the water, we're gonna take it to a whole nother level so that we can go ahead and double that beautiful, let's resolve some of these tax issues. Let me ask you another question.
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Does everyone qualify for Oh, I see. No, but don't assume that you do not qualify? That's all I can say.
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You might think that well look how much money I make or look at I don't have very many assets, maybe I do qualify. There's a lot of factors that go into IRS accepting the offer, or rejected it for that matter. And on the subject of of rejection. People nearly all the time will say well, what if they don't accept what I'm offering? What then, and I always advise people that we are not forbidden from doing a second offer but let's not kill this offer yet. Perhaps still accept more money than what we've offered them. And it's fair fairly come. But if we exhausted all of our appeals, you can borrow any more money. You say this is the best offer I can do. But I don't think that the IRS offer examiner treated me fairly. I felt that I had expenses that weren't allowed. Let's because let's talk about allowable expenses. Right? Let's talk about allowable expenses because okay, because that's huge. Sure. Okay, but go ahead, finish something. Just to continue with my thought. If the offer is rejected, you explain that you would like to move the case forward to the Appellate Division of IRS. In other words, you want to appeal their rejection. You get a letter back from IRS that says we received your request for appeals consideration and you will be contacted by the Appeals Office. That procedure usually takes roughly three months. Then you get a phone conference or if you prefer, you can ask
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have an in person conference, most people would prefer not to sit across the desk from an IRS Appeals officer. Because it's a little bit intimidating for a lot of people. So we do a telephone conference myself, my client, and the IRS Appeals officer, we review all the situation that are that has been arising with this offer. And the appeals officer will listen to everything, ask questions to make sure that he or she understands the whole situation.
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The appeals officer will not give you an answer, then in there, the appeals officer will say I've got to chew on this for a while I will get back to you and let you know my decision. Okay, now we come to the final step, because the appeals officer is be all and end all of this procedure. If you get rejected by appeals, you're left with the option of a doing another offering compromise. B do a payment plan, even though that's the least of the options that are acceptable. You might even decide that it's time to look into the possibility of a bankruptcy. And people ask me that all the time. Do I qualify for bankruptcy? Why now? I'm not a bankruptcy attorney. Nobody in my office as a bankruptcy attorneys. However, I refer you to one. Yeah, we can we can do that. Are you the one happily?
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The rule that it's always been in effect, since I can remember, is older taxes, generally qualified to be discharged. In a bank chapter seven. Bankruptcy. We don't we don't, we don't. But we don't give legal advice. We we we are in no position to give advice nullified. So ever, not legal advice. All right. So you can contact us 702-382-5737 Again, 702-382-5737. Rhonda, this idea for a future show. We're gonna talk. We're gonna bring another attorney on to talk about bankruptcy. Yeah, the real thing about bankruptcy, and what can and cannot be discharged. Allowable Expenses, let's talk about allowable expense right. Now, when we do an offer and compromise, we have an eight page financial statement to fill out. By we, I mean, me.
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But you have to Okay, so full, we will complete the statements, the financial statements, but you have to give us the information, information with documentation because you can't tell me that your rent is $5,000. But your lease says 2000. Right. Right. You know, and you gotta have to know the backup documentation. But yeah, they, they will believe anything you tell them, which is probably not a surprise to anybody. So we have to give them proof of your income. We also have to give proof of all your expenses. Now, as Leo was saying, that's where we tend to run into some problems.
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IRS sets a limit on what they feel is an acceptable amount for rent, car payment, just about any of your expenses.
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IRS has a set amount that they will allow. And you might say, Well, geez, that's all you allow for rent and utilities. I pay that I paid twice as much just for my rent alone. And that's without utilities. Well, sorry to hear that. But you are limited to this amount. So when you add up everything that they allow on your expenses, you might come to the point where your expenses, your true actual expenses are more than what your income is, for an offering compromise. That's an ideal situation for you personally, kind of sucks. But they will not allow expenses exceeding what they're pre
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preordained expenses are. And then no matter how much you beg won't work. Well, let me say this, there's always an exception to every rule. Always an exception every once in a while. So but our number is 702-382-5737. Again, 702-382-5737 you are listening to the less talk with Lea and Rhonda show. I am Lea Crawford. I am Rhonda Nolan in this beautiful new year of 2024. And we're here speaking with Larry, but Larry, I got a couple of questions for you. So you mentioned that you started working with numbers are working in the field after you were in the armed forces. When did you fall in love with numbers?
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Ever since I was in high school, and he said
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Having to do with with meth just came easy to me, I can't even give an explanation for it. But it was just something that I was drawn to.
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And that that continued when I, when I went to college, my original idea was to be a chemistry major. Okay.
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Science math, closely interrelated, of course.
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But I ran across a problem with a chemistry major, because they advised me that you can't take any chemistry courses for your first year. Now, this goes back a long, long time. And it was just a particular college I went to in upstate New York. So my first year in college, I did not take any courses in the field that I really wanted to major in. Instead, they they threw me in a physics class. And I thought, Well, okay, well, we'll get through this. And then I'll go through maths my last three years.
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With my schedule, heavily weighted, of course, right to maths, it didn't quite work out the way I had diagrammed it out. Because I couldn't wrap my mind around physics. And I just decided, after a year of doing that, that if I've got to use physics, towards my what, I want it to be a chemistry major that I said, I should probably reevaluate, okay, well, what my options are, and because of the fact that
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I thought maths might be a better, major for me, that's what I decided to do. Okay. So four years later, it turned out, okay, I did get my degree in math and minored in economics. But that basically had nothing to do with my working for IRS. I don't think I ever use any of my
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college math to do anything. Sure, because God had been a calculator. So
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because we not taken nothing to no powers and
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to the fifth degree,
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elements and all that stuff.
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But I want to say thank you for your service, because you deserve an armed forces. So thank you for thank you very much. We didn't hear that very much during the Vietnam era. Well, thank you for us.
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Thank you for your service. Thanks very much.
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So client comes in, they want to talk to you. If they do, if you think that they do not qualify, do you tell them?
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I told them exactly that, yeah, based on the information you gave me, you can afford to pay IRS, you have extra money every month. Now, this might take 10 years. And that's to say that you have limitations for IRS every year that you will for they have 10 years to collect the money from you. So your solution might not be an offering compromise with these figures that you we just reviewed, you probably don't qualify, however, you can qualify for a payment plan. And I suggest that you do that you have to do something, because doing nothing is not an option. And let's talk about the payment plans. Because even though he said payment plans is not always that is the option for some people, it is a payment plan. And another one of the things that we provide is when we have the POA with you we see if you're compliant, so we kind of follow up with you to ensure because if there's something going on and you can't make the payment, don't just not do anything. Let's contact them. Let's let them know what's going on. Because your situation could have changed. And we might have to update your financial statements. So there's consistent work until this debt is paid. Ignoring it is not the answer. Let's face it head on, let's talk about it had a conversation and my hurt at first to hear it. But I promise you once you start working it and working through it because they're Sisa dates, like you said the statute of limitations. So if the debt is owed and a Sisa date is coming up somebody's deck a fall off, okay? All right, and then at a point in time, you could be deemed as uncollectable. So there are a whole lot of little things that can happen. But as being in constant communication, and across our management group, we want to be in constant communication with you having the conversations talking about it. You know, like I said, you'd have VIP client, you're very important to us. Our business is helping you to resolve this issue. Along with if you just have a personal tax return, you want to get done. You want to open up a small business, so you don't know what forms you need to fill out with that prep service as well. And on our staff, we have a CPA EA we now have someone who specializes in offering compromises so we offer a myriad of services in this arena, so that we can support you, you know, we got notaries on staff. So if
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Things need to be notarized. We can do that as well. And we're mobile will come to you. So we try to do everything to make sure that at least you're some of the business side of your life. We can be your partner in that. I know we talked about everybody else's business throughout the years last January. So you're listening to the less talk with Leah and Rhonda show. I am Lea Crawford. I am Rhonda Nolan. And we are here today with Mr. Larry, who is a new addition to your team comes with a wealth of knowledge. Oh, blessed to have him blessed to be
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blessed to have him. But Rhonda, you know, I noticed end of our show. I know Larry, you want to know what Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to get up with us this early Saturday, cold early Saturday morning to come out here and talk to us. Rhonda cooking class was going on man, we ready? We rockin and rollin? Absolutely. This month of January. The next cooking class will take place on Tuesday, January the 23rd. Yes, that is the 100 black men in Las Vegas virtual youth cooking class. On Tuesday, January 23. At 6pm you can RSVP now@eventbrite.com and sign your junior chef up or yourself if you'd like to learn something new from when our fabulous chefs. Last month. December was fabulous. We really enjoyed the class. We had this very young chef that works at a five star restaurant in LA come on and teach us how to make you know a yummy healthy meal. And so I mean it wasn't last month. Oh we had a burger, a bourbon brown sugar salmon. We had coconut rice and asparagus and bok choy. And it was so good. That I didn't have not I didn't have to have that night. Kyle Hank, Ben, thank you so much. You did a wonderful job. Hey guys, if you're ever in Los Angeles, he's at a fabulous fabulous fabulous restaurants. His name again his name is Kyle Hickman Kyle Hanks and his restaurant I'm trying to remember his restaurant is in one of the top five restaurant hotels there whose name escapes me but anyway you can look them up on IG you know all the chef for IG IG Okay, all right. Anyway, the food was fantastic. Who's the chef this month? is a surprise. It's a surprise that Okay, so what I can tell you guys 100 black men in Las Vegas, the cooking class. But once you sign up, watch your emails, because you have to go and pick up the ingredients for your foods to be prepared. So you again have been listening to the let's talk with Leah and Rhonda show. I am Lea Crawford. I am Rhonda Nolan. And I guess we're gonna say farewell. It was fantastic. Happy New Year seeing you, Larry. And I'm so glad you share that information with us. And for all you entrepreneurs out there. It's a new year. Let's make
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it happen. peace and pleasure. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Bye bye.
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