Others have attorneys research and recommend by letter that the debt is uncollectible. A taxpayer would have to exhaust all the usual and reasonable means of collection to establish worthlessness. Without a precise test for defining worthlessness, the burden is on the taxpayer, Reid said. The best thing you can do is document all efforts, including requests for payment. As the Internet is becoming more widely used, information is a mere search engine away.
Directories can track down long-lost customers, for instance.
But collection efforts take time. ACA is an international trade organization of credit and collection professionals in the U.S. and 55 foreign countries. We usually have accounts placed for collection that have gone unpaid for about eight months with no communication from debtors, Saukko said. Some agencies send a monthly statement with a detailed status report. There s not a rule you can refer to, Dallas said.