Offer in compromise financial statement preparation

We identify the correct form (433-A, 433-B, or 433-F) based on your entity type and case stage, document real assets, income, and allowable expenses against current IRS collection financial standards, and run the reasonable-collection-potential calculation the IRS itself uses before proposing any figure. We prepare the complete offer package for our enrolled agent or CPA partner. What is not included: submitting the offer, negotiating a counteroffer directly with an IRS examiner, or representing you at any hearing, all handled by our credentialed partner under your signed Form 2848.

We start by confirming your true balance and every open tax year from transcripts, then document assets at their net realizable equity and income against allowable expense standards. We run the full reasonable-collection-potential calculation ourselves before anything goes to our partner, because a number that does not clear this internal check will not clear the IRS's either. Once the package is complete, our enrolled agent or CPA partner submits it with the required fee and initial payment, and manages any request for additional documentation or a counteroffer during review, which commonly runs several months to a year.

A taxpayer whose realistic future income and net asset equity, honestly calculated, is genuinely less than the full balance owed, and who can support that gap with real documentation. It is not the right tool for someone with meaningful home equity, retirement savings, or steady income capacity to pay over time, since the math in those cases will not support a reduced settlement and an installment agreement will move faster. We tell you plainly which category a given case falls into before building a full offer package.

The most frequent problem is a financial statement built around what feels fair rather than the actual reasonable-collection-potential formula, which the IRS will recalculate and reject regardless of how the taxpayer's own math came out. The second is filing the wrong form, a full 433-A when a shorter 433-F would have been accepted, adding unnecessary time. The third is missing the low-income certification that would have waived the application fee and initial payment, paying costs that did not need to be paid.

We pull transcripts through the IRS Transcript Delivery System under your authorization, build the financial statement and reasonable-collection-potential calculation in Drake Tax, and assemble supporting asset and expense documentation as PDFs in Adobe Acrobat. Business income figures draw from your existing QuickBooks Online or Xero file where applicable. None of this requires switching accounting platforms, and the same reconciled file supports the calculation from the first transcript pull through the version our enrolled agent or CPA partner ultimately submits.

Offer in compromise preparation is priced as its own engagement given the depth of documentation and calculation involved, separate from the IRS application fee itself (waived for taxpayers who qualify for low-income certification). See the pricing page for current rates, and we scope the fee once transcripts and an initial asset and income review confirm the case is a realistic fit for an offer.

Every offer we build runs the actual reasonable-collection-potential formula, net realizable asset equity plus a future-income multiplier, before a number is proposed, not a figure chosen because it feels achievable. We confirm the correct form for the entity and case stage, check low-income certification eligibility before assuming fees apply, and document every asset and expense figure with records that will survive IRS verification rather than a client-provided estimate alone.

Most active collection action generally pauses while a complete offer is under IRS review, though interest and certain penalties continue accruing on the underlying balance, and the collection statute's clock is generally suspended for the review period plus a short window afterward. A rejected offer does not return you to the original deadline, it extends it, which we factor into whether pursuing an offer makes sense given how much runway a given collection statute has left.