Realizable equity
Home equity, vehicles, bank balances, retirement accounts, and business assets — each valued with the IRS's own discounts and exemptions rather than at market price.
Offer in Compromise · Las Vegas, Nevada
Offer in compromise, honestly assessed.
An offer in compromise settles a tax debt for less than the full balance — when the financials support it. We run the IRS's own reasonable collection potential math before you commit to anything, then build and defend the package. Flat fee, quoted up front.
- Free-of-hype pre-qualification using the IRS's own formula
- Full 656 / 433-A(OIC) package with documentation, not a bare form
- Appeals and revised offers if the examiner values a line differently
What the IRS actually looks at.
Future income
Average monthly income projected over the offer period. Irregular self-employment income needs to be documented carefully, or the IRS will use its best month.
Allowable expenses
National and local standards for housing, utilities, food, and transportation — Clark County figures, not a national average — plus documented necessary costs.
Filing compliance
Every required return must be filed and current-year withholding or estimates must be correct before an offer is even processable.
Special circumstances
Serious illness, age, and dependents can support an offer below the calculated amount when documented properly under effective tax administration.
Five-year terms
Accepted offers carry a five-year compliance requirement. We set up withholding and estimated payments so the deal actually holds.
The offer program is a formula, and the formula is public
The IRS decides an offer in compromise on reasonable collection potential: what it believes it could collect from you if it pursued the debt normally. That figure is the equity it can reach in your assets plus your expected disposable income over the offer period. If the balance owed is higher than that figure, settling is in the government's interest and an offer has a real path. If the balance is lower than that figure, no amount of storytelling will get it accepted.
This is why the first thing we do is not sell you a settlement. It is to run your assets, income, and allowable expenses through the same worksheet an offer examiner will use, and to tell you what range the calculation produces. Roughly a third of offers submitted nationally are accepted, and the failures are overwhelmingly cases that never fit the math or were filed while returns were still missing.
The expense side is where local knowledge earns its keep. The IRS allows housing, utility, and transportation amounts by county, and Clark County figures are not the national average. Self-employed clients also need income presented as a documented average rather than as whatever the strongest recent month happened to be. Small differences on these lines move the offer amount substantially.
What we assemble
A credible offer is a package, not a form. Form 656 carries the offer itself; Form 433-A(OIC) or 433-B(OIC) carries the financial disclosure. Behind them go bank statements, pay records or profit-and-loss detail, vehicle and mortgage statements, retirement account values, medical documentation where illness is part of the picture, and a written narrative that explains anything a stranger reading the file would otherwise misread.
We also confirm filing compliance before submission, because an offer arriving while a return is missing is returned as unprocessable and you lose the collection hold that came with it. If years are outstanding, we file them first — that is ordinary work here.
Once the offer is with an examiner, the case is a conversation. Examiners request additional documents, revalue assets, and question expenses. As an IRS Authorized Representative (CAF # 0316-73651), Kevin handles that exchange directly, including appeals if the rejection turns on a valuation we can rebut.
When an offer is the wrong answer
We say so, and this is the part the settlement mills skip. If you have meaningful home equity or steady income, the honest outcome is usually a streamlined or partial-pay installment agreement, and sometimes a lien subordination so you can refinance. If your income barely covers necessities, currently-not-collectible status stops collection now without the cost and delay of an offer, and the collection statute keeps running in the background.
Penalty relief is often the faster win. First-time abatement and reasonable-cause requests can remove a large share of a multi-year balance, which occasionally moves the remaining debt into a range you can simply pay off.
You will get that recommendation before you spend money on a filing that was never going to be accepted. The consult is free and takes about twenty minutes.
Offer in compromise questions.
- Do I qualify for an offer in compromise?
- Qualification is arithmetic, not persuasion. The IRS compares your realizable asset equity plus your future monthly income over the offer period against the balance owed. If that figure is less than what you owe, an offer is realistic. If it is more, the IRS will reject the offer and an installment agreement or currently-not-collectible status is the better route.
- Is the 'pennies on the dollar' advertising real?
- Sometimes the accepted amount is very small — but only when the financials genuinely support it. Those ads exist because the outliers make good marketing. We run your numbers through the IRS's own reasonable collection potential formula first and tell you the likely range before you pay us to file anything.
- How long does an offer in compromise take?
- Plan on roughly six to twelve months from submission to decision, sometimes longer if the case moves between units. Collection activity is generally suspended while a processable offer is pending, which is part of the value even before a decision arrives.
- What does it cost to submit one?
- There is an IRS application fee plus a required initial payment, both of which can be waived if you qualify under the low-income certification. Our work is quoted as a flat fee before we start — the financial analysis, Form 656 and 433-A(OIC) package, documentation, and the correspondence with the offer examiner.
- What happens if the IRS rejects my offer?
- You have appeal rights, and a rejection often comes with the examiner's own calculation, which tells us exactly which line they valued differently. Many rejected offers are winnable on appeal or as a revised offer. If the numbers truly do not support it, we pivot to a payment plan or hardship status.
- Do I have to stay compliant afterward?
- Yes. An accepted offer requires you to file and pay on time for five years. Default puts the original balance back, with interest. This is why we usually pair an accepted offer with corrected withholding or estimated payments, and often bookkeeping, so the five years are uneventful.
Related: IRS back taxes, IRS tax resolution, payroll tax problems, tax accountant Las Vegas.