Enrolled Agent Part 1

Darrin Mish: Hi. My name's Darrin T. Mish, and I'm a tax attorney with a practice based in Tampa, Florida. My practice is focused exclusively on the resolution of IRS Tax problems and tax planning for clients throughout the United States and throughout the globe.

I decided to make this video today because I get asked questions all the time about questions that you should ask an Enrolled Agent before you actually consider hiring an Enrolled Agent for your IRS tax problems.

Now, I want to make it clear that I don't have anything against Enrolled Agents, per se. I've trained a great number of them, and there can be very good Enrolled Agents. But, there are a number of questions that I though were important enough that I wanted to go ahead and make these videos so we could take about what you needed to know about your Enrolled Agent before you considered hiring them.

The first question is how long have they been actually solving IRS problems, and I think that this is perhaps the most crucial question of all. You don't want somebody resolving your IRS Tax problem if they haven't been doing it for quite some time.

Now, if you think back, about how long it's been since you got into this trouble, and what steps you've taken to actually extricate yourself from this problem, then you realize that this is not a simple problem, and it does not have a simple solution. So, in essence, you don't want people practicing on your time.

So, you're going to want to go ahead and ask about their experience, not in general, not in the financial sector, not selling insurance or cars, not working for the IRS, but how long have they actually been representing client taxpayers like you and me. I think that's absolutely a crucial factor.

The second question is did they used to actually work for the government? That's important because it's a little known fact that Enrolled Agents are federally licensed by the US Government, and they like to make a big deal out of that. I don't have a problem with that, per se. There is an exam that they have to take, and I've been told it's a rather rigorous exam. I didn't take it, because I'm actually an attorney, but the Enrolled Agents that I speak with say that it's a rather rigorous exam.

Now, you might ask yourself if it was so rigorous, then how come they didn't go to law school. That's a little disingenuous, but perhaps you should ask why didn't they sit for their CPA Exam? I think you might be able to figure out that question.

But, the other way that Enrolled Agents become licensed by the federal government is by virtue of their employment with the US Government for more than five years. So, ask yourself, does working as a revenue officer representing the best interest of the government with all the power at their disposal of the federal government really qualify them to work for you to resolve your tax problem? I think not. Let me give you a short story.

Every week we file an appeal of some sort dealing with the IRS. There's two common types of appeals I'm going to talk about. The fist is called a Collection Due Process Hearing, and CDP is the abbreviation for that. And the second is called a Collection Appeal Program Appeal, or a CAP Appeal, so that's CAP.

I'll grant them that CDP and CAP are rather similar, and of course it can be confusing. But, on a routine basis, I've had revenue officers tell me that I can't file a CDP or can't file a CAP because they're frankly confused. If they're confused when they're actually working for the federal government, how confused are they going to be when they're supposed to be working for you? Just something that I though you might want to consider.

The next question is are they on a government pension? Most of those Enrolled Agents that used to work for the federal government go ahead and retire from the federal government, and then want to go out and practice on their own. They want to experiment and use you as a guinea pig, to decide whether or not they're going to be able to make a living in their retirement years to supplement their government pension.

My biggest problem with that is not that they're on a pension. And it's not that they're of retirement age at all. My biggest gripe about that is if they're on a government pension, perhaps they're going to be a little less likely to shake things up. I happen to know of Enrolled Agents that are retired IRS agents, that are afraid to offend their friends back at the local office, or even at pay grades above them. They're afraid to offend the people on appeals.

Don't get me wrong. I don't go around trying to offend IRS employees. In fact we have a very collegial atmosphere, with regard to most IRS employees. But, on the other hand, I don't have to fear for my livelihood or my pension if I were to rub someone the wrong way. I don't know the people that I work with at the IRS on an intimate, friendly level like those people that used to work at the IRS do.

So frankly, we don't worry about offending IRS agents. We don't go out of our way to do it, but it's not something that I stay up at night thinking about. So, it's another thing to consider.

A fourth question is how many clients have they actually represented? I think that's pretty important too, because you need to know how many clients has a person as a professional represented in the type of area that you're requesting them to help you, because that experience that they've gained, working on other cases is going to be invaluable to them in dealing with yours.

And the last question that I have today is can they provide real life examples of cases that they've actually worked on, or are they just things they've read about in books? See, at our firm, we can usually give you two, three, four, five examples, or even more. We can probably bore you to death with examples of cases just like yours, and we can tell you how they came out, whether it looks good, or whether it was bad.

If it came out good, we're going to go ahead and try to emulate that. And if it came out bad, we're going to go ahead and try to figure out what we learned from those cases so that we can move forward so that you don't have a bad outcome.

That's about all the time I have today. But, I wanted to go ahead and let you know that I have 15 other questions on three other videos that are available on my website. And I'd like to encourage you to visit our website if you'd like to see what those are.

Our website is at getirshelp.com, and thanks for tuning in today. I really appreciate it.