Robert L. Sommers, all rights reserved. Spurred by the media parade of IRS horror stories, Congress has enacted significant reforms for those ensnared by the IRS bureaucracy at the audit and collection levels.
Taxpayers have new procedural rights, and many of the more egregious abuses have been eliminated.
In some situations, the burden of proof on factual issues now shifts to IRS to win. To shift the burden, taxpayers must have reasonably cooperated with IRS, complied with all reasonable requests for information, and must have maintained records and substantiated items as required under present law. Attorney fees and costs may be awarded when IRS is not substantially justified in its position. Now, they may be recovered from the date IRS first issues a proposed deficiency. If IRS has lost on similar issues in another U.S. Court of Appeals, attorneys fees will more likely be awarded.