Currently-not-collectible request support

The engagement covers a full financial statement built on Form 433-F, or Form 433-A where the balance size or case complexity calls for the longer form, with every income and expense line backed by pay stubs, bank statements, profit and loss reports, or lease and loan documents rather than estimates. We compare your actual expenses against the IRS collection financial standards for your county and household size and flag, before submission, any line that runs meaningfully over what the standards allow, since that is the line an examiner will question first. Where a genuine hardship exists beyond the numbers, such as a medical condition or a recent job loss, we gather documentation to support that narrative alongside the financial statement itself. The finished package, along with our notes on where the case is strong and where it is thin, goes to our enrolled agent or CPA partner for review and submission.

We start by pulling account transcripts to confirm the actual balance and which tax years are involved, since a currently-not-collectible request needs to address every open year, not just the one on the most recent notice. From there we collect income and expense documentation directly from you, usually over one or two structured calls rather than a long questionnaire, and build the 433-F or 433-A around what that documentation actually supports. We run the numbers against the current collection standards before anything goes out the door, so there are no surprises once our partner submits it. After submission, we track the case with you through any request for additional documentation the IRS sends back, which happens on a meaningful share of these requests, and set a calendar reminder ahead of the periodic review date the IRS sets once the status is approved.

This fits a business or an individual carrying a real IRS balance where current income, after necessary expenses, genuinely does not leave room to make any payment without falling behind on payroll, rent, or other operating costs. It is not a shortcut for someone who could afford a modest installment agreement but would rather not, since the financial statement is built from real documentation and an examiner who finds daylight between the numbers and the documentation will reject the request outright. It also fits a case where a levy or wage garnishment already active needs a faster off-ramp than a full offer in compromise can provide, since a currently-not-collectible approval typically moves faster than a settlement.

The most common problem is a financial statement built from memory or a rough monthly budget instead of actual records, which either gets rejected outright or approved on numbers that unravel at the first periodic review. The second is expenses claimed at levels well above the IRS collection standards without documentation explaining why, which reads as padding even when the underlying cost is real. The third is a request filed for only the most recent tax year while older years with open balances go unaddressed, which leaves part of the exposure unresolved. The fourth is no plan for the periodic review, so a status that took weeks to secure lapses quietly and collection resumes with no warning to the client.

We work from the IRS Transcript Delivery System to confirm balances and filing status across every open year, prepare the underlying financial statement using Drake Tax alongside the standard IRS forms, and rely on QuickBooks Online or Xero exports where business income and expense documentation needs to tie back to the books. Bank and card statement PDFs typically come to us through Adobe Acrobat for annotation and indexing against each line of the 433-F or 433-A, so a reviewer can trace every figure back to its source document without asking twice.

Currently-not-collectible preparation is scoped and quoted as its own engagement, separate from the standard monthly bookkeeping tiers on the rate card, since the work depends on how many tax years are involved and how much documentation already exists versus needs to be reconstructed. A single-year, well-documented case is a much smaller scope than a multi-year balance with several missing records. We quote a fixed price once we have seen the transcripts and a first pass at your income and expenses, so you know the cost before committing, and any filing or representation fee charged directly by our enrolled agent or CPA partner is disclosed separately.

The measure that matters is whether the request gets approved on the first submission, without a round of additional-documentation requests that delay relief while a levy or garnishment is still active. We track that outcome case by case, and where a first submission does come back with a request for more information, we treat that as a signal to review, so the next case in a similar situation is built with more supporting documentation up front rather than repeating the same gap.

Approval is not the end of the case. The IRS revisits currently-not-collectible status on a set cycle, commonly every one to two years depending on the balance and how the initial approval was coded, and will ask for an updated financial statement at that point. We calendar that date the day the original request is approved and reach out to you well before it arrives, so the review is a scheduled check-in with updated documentation rather than an unexpected letter that reopens the case cold. If your income has genuinely improved by then, we say so and help move the case to whichever resolution, a payment plan or a settlement, actually fits the new numbers, rather than trying to extend a status the facts no longer support.