Taxation & Estate Planning

The advantage of the Automated Collection Service practitioner priority line

By howardlevy

For taxpayers seeking to contact the IRS on their own, what follows is a reason not to go at it alone but through a tax professional.

Professionals can access the IRS Automated Collection Service by first dialing in through the IRS Practitioner Priority Line.  This phone line is exclusively for the use of tax professionals.  It offers significant benefits over the number made available to the general public on IRS collection notices.

First, calling the IRS Practitioner Priority Line saves time by avoiding the longer public holding queue of calling ACS directly.  

But more importantly, when connected to the IRS Practitioner Priority Line, the call can be transferred to the IRS Practitioner Priority service line employees that work within Automated Collection Service.    

The IRS employees staffing the ACS Practitioner Priority line tend to offer a significant advantage to you over the IRS representatives handling calls on general line.  

ACS Practitioner Priority line employees tend to be better trained, fairer, more open to listening and more sophisticated in their resolution of a case then other ACS staffers.

This is a great way to get a leg up when negotiating with the IRS Automated Collection Service, who are notoriously difficult to deal with.  

Full post as published by IRS and the Law on February 20, 2009 (boomark / email).