Transcript review
We request account, wage, and income transcripts for every open year — filing status, balances, assessed penalties, and every income document the IRS holds.
Back Taxes & Unfiled Returns · Las Vegas, Nevada
IRS back taxes and unfiled returns.
Behind two years or ten, we start the same way: pull your IRS transcripts, find out exactly what the IRS thinks you owe, file the missing years in order, and then deal with the balance. Flat fee quoted before any work starts, and an IRS Authorized Representative handling the correspondence.
- IRS transcript pull so we work from IRS records, not guesses
- Missing returns prepared and filed in the right order
- Penalty abatement and payment plans once you are compliant
How we clear a back-tax problem.
Compliance plan
We identify which years must be filed, which can be closed as non-filing years, and whether any IRS-prepared Substitute for Return needs to be replaced.
Return preparation
Missing returns are prepared with the deductions, expenses, dependents, and filing status you were actually entitled to — often cutting the assessed balance.
Penalty relief
First-time abatement and reasonable-cause requests filed where the facts support them, with documentation attached rather than a bare request.
Resolution
Installment agreement, partial-pay plan, currently-not-collectible status, or an offer in compromise — matched to what your numbers can actually support.
Staying current
Withholding or estimated payments reset so next April does not restart the same cycle. Bookkeeping and payroll can be handled here too.
Unfiled returns are a filing problem before they are a money problem
Almost nobody stops filing on purpose. A business year ends in a mess, a spouse handled it before, a 1099 arrives for income already spent, one year slips and then the next feels impossible to face. The balance grows in the background, and the letters escalate from a CP59 asking why no return was filed to a CP504 threatening collection.
The important thing to understand is that the IRS treats a missing return very differently from an unpaid balance. There is no statute of limitations that runs on a year you never filed, so the year stays open indefinitely and the assessment period never starts. Refunds work the other way: a refund on a return filed more than three years late is generally lost for good. We routinely find years where a client is owed money and years where they owe, and the only way to know which is which is to file.
The IRS also has the option of preparing the return for you. A Substitute for Return uses only third-party reporting — the gross amount on a 1099-NEC with none of the mileage, materials, subcontractors, or home-office expenses behind it, single filing status, no dependents. The resulting balance is frequently several times the real number, and it becomes enforceable unless you replace it with an accurate return.
What a Las Vegas back-tax case usually looks like
Self-employment drives most of the cases we see in the valley: rideshare and delivery drivers, contractors and trades, entertainers and hospitality workers with tip income, real-estate agents, and small operators who took 1099 work and never made an estimated payment. Nevada has no state income tax, which removes one layer of trouble but also means nothing catches the problem early — there is no state notice arriving first.
The second common pattern is the S-Corp or LLC that stopped filing. Payroll was run informally, distributions were taken without reasonable compensation, and once one 1120-S is late the owner's personal 1040 cannot be finished either. Those cases need the entity returns rebuilt from bank records before the individual return can be filed correctly.
The third is inherited: a divorce, a death, or a bookkeeper who disappeared, leaving someone holding paperwork they never created. We work from bank statements, merchant processor reports, and IRS transcripts, so a missing shoebox of receipts is not a reason to keep waiting.
Filing first, then negotiating
Every collection alternative the IRS offers — an installment agreement, currently-not-collectible status, an offer in compromise — requires that you be current on filings first. This is why we do not lead with a settlement promise. Nobody can honestly tell you what your case will settle for before the returns are filed and the real balance is known.
Once you are compliant, the options become concrete. Balances under the streamlined threshold usually qualify for an installment agreement without a full financial disclosure. Larger balances need a collection information statement, where the documented reality of Las Vegas housing costs, vehicle expenses, and irregular self-employment income matters a great deal to the outcome. If the numbers show you genuinely cannot pay, currently-not-collectible or an offer in compromise is on the table.
Penalty relief runs alongside. First-time abatement is available to taxpayers with a clean prior history, and reasonable cause covers illness, records lost to a disaster, or reliance on a preparer who failed. These are worth real money on multi-year cases, and they are far easier to win with the years filed and documentation attached.
Flat fees, and the same person start to finish
We quote a flat fee per return and a flat fee for the representation work before anything begins, so you are not watching an hourly meter on a problem that already frightens you. You approve the number in writing first.
Goodfella's is a 100% virtual firm headquartered in Las Vegas, serving clients across Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah, and the rest of the country. Everything happens by phone, email, and secure upload — no taking a day off work to sit in an office. Kevin has spent 21+ years on returns, books, and IRS problems, and he is the person who does the work.
If the same books that caused the missing years are still a mess, we can take that over as well, so the returns going forward are built on numbers that tie out instead of being reconstructed under pressure every spring.
Back taxes, answered.
- How many years of back taxes do I actually have to file?
- In most cases the IRS asks for the last six years of returns to bring you back into compliance, and sometimes fewer if you had no filing requirement in a given year. We pull your IRS transcripts first so we file the years the IRS is actually looking for instead of guessing.
- Can the IRS file a return for me if I never filed?
- Yes, and you do not want that. When you stop filing, the IRS can prepare a Substitute for Return using only the income documents it has — no deductions, no expenses, no dependents, filing status set to the least favorable option. Filing your own accurate return almost always lowers the balance.
- Will filing back taxes trigger an audit?
- Filing accurate late returns is the normal path back into compliance and is not by itself an audit trigger. What does create problems is continuing to ignore notices, which escalates to liens, levies, and wage garnishment.
- I do not have my old records. Can you still file?
- Usually yes. Wage and income transcripts give us W-2s, 1099s, 1099-NEC, 1099-K, mortgage interest, and brokerage reporting the IRS received. For self-employment we rebuild income and expenses from bank and merchant statements.
- What happens to penalties and interest?
- Failure-to-file and failure-to-pay penalties plus interest are usually the biggest part of a back-tax balance. Once the returns are filed we look at first-time penalty abatement and reasonable-cause relief, and then at the payment options that fit the balance.
- Can you talk to the IRS for me?
- Yes. Kevin is an IRS Authorized Representative (CAF # 0316-73651). With a signed authorization on file we contact the IRS, get transcripts, and handle the correspondence so those calls stop landing on you.
Related: IRS tax resolution, offer in compromise, payroll tax problems, tax preparation, the unfiled-taxes guide.