The Wilson Firm's client was audited by the IRS regarding its payroll tax obligations from 2017 to 2021. The core issue was the classification of its workers: whether they should be considered employees or independent contractors. The Wilson Firm appealed the IRS's initial decision. After nearly a year of advocating for the client, IRS Appeals issued its ruling on May 16, 2024. Appeals determined that none of our client’s workers should be reclassified as employees. This decision not only saved our client over $1.1 million in potential payroll tax liabilities but also prevented the need to reclassify these workers as employees going forward, which...
Strategic Victory: The Wilson Firm's Expert Negotiation Reduces ESRP Penalty from $465,000 to $9,000
The Wilson Firm recently navigated a significant victory in Employer Shared Responsibility Payment (ESRP) penalty negotiation, dramatically reducing a client's ESRP penalty from $465,000 to just $9,000. In this case, The Wilson Firm adeptly demonstrated to the IRS that the company satisfied the "minimum essential coverage" and "minimum value" standards, thereby ensuring that Section 4980H(a) penalties were not applicable. Instead, only the stipulations of Section 4980H(b) were relevant to the client's situation. This strategic approach allowed The Wilson Firm to bypass the more complex and potentially costly "affordability" defense, which could have led to higher expenses and prolonged resolution times without...
By: Jack Naranjo At the urging of the Taxpayer Advocate Service and practitioners, the IRS has ended its practice of automatically assessing penalties at the time of filing for late-filed Forms 3520 to report foreign gifts and inheritances. Also, by the end of the year, the IRS will begin reviewing any reasonable cause statements attached to late-filed Forms 3520 and 3520-A for the trust portion of the form BEFORE assessing any penalty. The IRS previous practice was to automatically assess penalties, even when a reasonable cause statement was attached. The burden was on the taxpayer to raise the reasonable cause argument...
The Wilson Firm recently achieved a significant victory for its client, a subsidiary of a Fortune 100 company. The case involved a dispute with Montgomery Central Appraisal District over the value of approximately 30 acres of commercial property located in The Woodlands, Texas. The Wilson Firm sued Montgomery Central Appraisal District in September 2019 over the appraised value of the client’s property after attempting to resolve the matter with the Montgomery County Appraisal Review Board. While the lawsuit was pending, the Appraisal District continued to over-appraise the value of the property in successive years, expanding the lawsuit to include 2020, 2021,...
Client worked for an international oil and gas company based in Europe, where the employees had the equivalent of a European 401k. The client was given erroneous advice and never reported this foreign account when filing their tax returns. Before coming to The Wilson Firm, the client was looking at paying approximately $100k with the combined amounts of tax and penalties owed. This amount could have been increased by an additional $70k if the client’s actions were determined to be "willful," and they were assessed penalties for this. Instead, with the help of our firm, our client paid less than 13%...
