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Great Outcome
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My situation started just the same way it starts for most people, with an audit notice in the mail. I have to say I had never had any problem of this kind and didn’t know what to do. I own a small business and going through a divorce. I had so many thoughts of what could have triggered an audit. Anyway, my first instinct was to call my tax guy and he was polite in beginning and trying to comfort me that every was going to be ok, needless to say I trusted him since he had been doing my taxes for many years and because he kept reassuring me that is normal and routine. A little later he suggested to hire and accountant, who is his friend. The representation was suppose to be free as part of the included services he provides with the tax preparation services he has provided; The accountant charged me and substantial amount to organize the paperwork and work out an strategy. To make the story short – after two meetings the IRS has assessed a tax liability of about $15K, and the guy representing me was not sure of the tax laws applying to me in my situation and/or why the IRS was disallowing my deductions. Then I decided to represent myself; no change in their decision, then I resourced to an appeal, but by now I was scared and stressed out, upset, because in my mind everything I had claimed in my tax return was logical and legally legitimate, but the IRS would not see it that way.
Then like art of magic, all those tax representation services advertisements started to get my attention, so I gave in and started to inquire and do some research, needless to say I was about to sign the contract with one of those hyped up companies that pay a lot of money in advertisement, that at the end the one paying for that is the consumer as part of the company’s cost of doing business. I did get a lot of good talk! I decided to take another look at the contract and was not fully satisfied with the language, so I decided to do another search online and luckily; Mr. Mike Habib’s web-site was in one of those hits. I decided to call him and ask him the same questions I had asked the other people and I had to say that right away I noticed the difference in the professionalism and a difference in the way I was treated. He took the time to listen to me and gave me enough information to make me feel comfortable to make a decision, but at the same time I did not feel pressured to make a decision right away; right at that time; He allowed me the space and time to think about it. He made suggestions as to what other questions to ask to the competition, so I took his advice and asked more questions, and sure enough, their representation was not what I was looking for or needed and they were not willing to change the contract to tailor it to my needs. But I had been made believed it would the same type of representation, so what I did, because words mean nothing to these salesmen, I requested to have the contract modified to state clearly the representation that I would be getting, that I needed, and they flat out refused. Their main focus is negotiating a payment plan and not disputing the charges.
Mr. Habib and I met, discussed my situation and he explained to me the details of my situation, kept me fully informed of the process. He was able to establish the legitimacy of my tax return and he even followed up with me all the way up to making sure that I had submitted all the proper signed forms; that my friends is professionalism; you don’t feel like just another number in a book. Also, if I had hired him from day one from when I got the audit notice, I would probably had avoided the stress, waste o my time and mainly had saved some money too.
Mr. Hibib is some one willing to strongly defend you rights, to exhaust all avenues before proposing the last option of negotiating a payment plan.
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