4.9 279 Reviews | 
5.0 132 Reviews |
BBB A+ | Serving all 50 states If the IRS is taking part of your paycheck, you are looking for a wage garnishment attorney because you want someone to get between you and the IRS today. Our tax attorneys, CPAs, and IRS Enrolled Agents do exactly that: Power of Attorney is filed, IRS contact routes to us, and the tax debt underneath the garnishment gets a real resolution plan.
01 · How this works
Start with the part most people get wrong. Innovative Tax Relief is a tax resolution firm, not a law firm. Our team includes tax attorneys alongside CPAs and IRS Enrolled Agents, and all three of those credentials hold unlimited rights to practice before the IRS under Treasury Circular 230. When your case needs an attorney, you get an attorney. When it needs an Enrolled Agent, you get the person who works collection cases every single day.
That distinction is also why geography stops mattering the moment you have representation. IRS practice rights are federal. An IRS tax attorney admitted in Florida, an Enrolled Agent licensed by the Treasury Department, and a CPA licensed by any state board can all file Power of Attorney for a taxpayer in Oregon, Texas, or Ohio and work the case to the end. We represent clients in all 50 states, and if you are still searching for tax relief near me, that is the reason the search matters less than it feels like it should.
What representation buys you is not magic. It is a credentialed person standing in the communication line, a full read of your IRS account transcripts before anyone opens their mouth, and a proposal put in front of the IRS in the format the IRS actually accepts. Most of the damage we see in tax debt cases was done by a taxpayer answering a Revenue Officer’s questions honestly and unprepared.
The rest of this page covers when a tax debt attorney is the right call and when another credential is, what happens in a wage garnishment case, how the 21-day bank levy hold works, what an IRS audit help and audit defense engagement looks like, and what to check before you hire anybody. If you would rather just talk it through, the free consultation is the diagnostic step.
FL Tax Attorney · U.S. Tax Court
Florida-licensed tax attorney and U.S. Tax Court admitted advocate. JD from Florida State University. Negotiates directly with the IRS to defend clients from aggressive collection action.
Our credentials and accreditations →02 · Attorney vs EA vs CPA
People search for a tax debt attorney because "attorney" sounds like the heaviest tool available. Sometimes it is. Often the case belongs with an Enrolled Agent, and a firm that tells you otherwise is selling the title rather than the work. Here is the honest breakdown.
Licensed by a state bar
A tax attorney is a licensed lawyer who practices tax. Before the IRS, an attorney has unlimited practice rights, and outside the IRS an attorney can do things the other two credentials cannot: file a petition in U.S. Tax Court, argue a legal position in a Collection Due Process appeal, and hold a conversation under attorney-client privilege.
Strongest on: Tax Court petitions, appeals that turn on a legal argument, trust fund recovery penalty disputes, cases with fraud or criminal exposure, and any case where privilege matters.
Licensed by the U.S. Treasury
An Enrolled Agent is licensed federally by the Treasury Department, either by passing the three-part Special Enrollment Examination or through qualifying IRS employment. An EA has the same unlimited right to practice before the IRS that an attorney has, in every state, and collection work is what EAs do all day.
Strongest on: Wage garnishment and bank levy releases, installment agreements, Offers in Compromise, Currently Not Collectible requests, penalty abatement, and transcript analysis.
Licensed by a state board
A Certified Public Accountant is licensed by a state board of accountancy and also holds unlimited practice rights before the IRS. A CPA is the right credential when the problem is the return itself rather than the collection action attached to it.
Strongest on: Years of unfiled returns, amended returns, reconstructed business books, substitute-for-return replacements, and audits that hinge on documentation rather than law.
The short version: hire a tax attorney when there is a legal question inside your tax problem. A U.S. Tax Court petition after a Notice of Deficiency, a Collection Due Process appeal that turns on whether the IRS followed its own procedure, a trust fund recovery penalty the IRS wants to assess against you personally, an audit where you would rather not explain a position without privilege, or anything that smells like criminal exposure. Those are attorney cases, and they are not close calls.
Everything else is usually collection work. A garnished paycheck, a frozen bank account, a balance you cannot pay, six years of returns you never filed. An Enrolled Agent has the same unlimited practice rights before the IRS that an attorney has, and this is the work EAs are licensed and tested specifically to do. Our case assignment follows the problem, which is why the first call is a diagnostic and not a pitch.
One note on the money, and then we will leave it alone: fees depend on the services your case actually requires and on its complexity, they are never a percentage of anything the IRS forgives, and they are explained to you before you decide anything. You can get that quote in the free consultation.
03 · Wage garnishment
An IRS wage garnishment is a continuous levy. It does not run once and stop. It attaches to every paycheck until the balance is satisfied or the IRS releases it, and unlike a private creditor garnishment capped at 25 percent of disposable income, an IRS levy follows the exemption tables in IRS Publication 1494, which can leave a great deal less than that in your hands.
Power of Attorney is filed the day you engage us. From that point the IRS calls and writes to your representative instead of you, and your representative can pull your full IRS account transcripts to see exactly what was assessed, for which years, and where the collection statute stands.
The IRS must send a Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing (Letter 1058 or LT11) before it garnishes wages. That notice starts a 30-day clock to request a Collection Due Process hearing on Form 12153. A timely CDP request generally suspends levy action while the hearing is pending, which is the single most valuable deadline in collection work.
The IRS releases a garnishment when it has a reason to. That reason is almost always a resolution already in motion: an installment agreement, Currently Not Collectible status, or a pending Offer in Compromise. This is why a garnishment case and a tax debt case are the same case.
Under IRC section 6343, the IRS must release a levy if it is creating an economic hardship, meaning it leaves you unable to meet basic living expenses. Documenting that hardship on Form 433-A with pay stubs, rent or mortgage, utilities, and medical costs is the argument, and it is won on paperwork rather than on the phone call.
The IRS will not approve any collection alternative while returns are missing. If unfiled years are what triggered the garnishment, those returns get prepared and filed in parallel, not afterward.
Now the honest answer on speed, because it is the question every caller asks first. Power of Attorney goes in the day you engage us, and that part is immediate. The release is not ours to give. The IRS decides, and it decides based on whether a collection alternative is in place or a hardship is documented, so the timeline moves at the speed of your paperwork and IRS processing. Any wage garnishment attorney or resolution firm that hands you a date on the first call is guessing.
What we can tell you is what shortens it. Have your last two pay stubs, your rent or mortgage, your utility and insurance costs, and a list of the years you did or did not file ready for the consultation. Cases where the client sends documents in the first week move differently from cases where they arrive in the second month.
Garnishment work sits inside our wage garnishment and IRS levy relief service, and the resolution that ends it is usually an IRS payment plan, Currently Not Collectible status, or an Offer in Compromise. If your income is Social Security rather than wages, the rules are different and we cover them in can the IRS garnish Social Security.
04 · Bank levies
A bank levy works differently from a wage garnishment, and the difference is the only thing that matters when it happens to you. A wage levy is continuous. A bank levy is a snapshot. It grabs the balance sitting in the account on the day the bank processes the notice, freezes exactly that amount, and holds it for 21 days before wiring it to the IRS. Deposits that land after that day are not caught by that levy, though the IRS can and does issue another one.
Those 21 days exist for a reason. Congress built the hold in so a taxpayer has time to challenge the levy, prove the funds are not theirs, or show that losing the money creates an economic hardship. It is the only window in collection where a phone call and a fast Form 2848 change the outcome directly, and it is why a bank levy is the one situation where we tell people not to wait until Monday.
Inside the window, a representative can request a release under IRC section 6343 on hardship grounds, show that the levy was issued while an installment agreement or Offer in Compromise was pending, argue that the collection statute has expired on the year at issue, or establish a resolution that gives the IRS a reason to stand down. After the funds leave the bank, the argument becomes a refund claim, and refund claims are slow and much harder to win.
Bank levy releases are handled through the same IRS levy and bank levy release service as garnishments. If the IRS has also filed a Notice of Federal Tax Lien against you, that is a separate problem with a separate fix, covered in IRS tax lien help.
05 · Audits
People search for an IRS audit attorney the day the letter arrives, and the instinct is right even when the credential is not the deciding factor. The IRS runs three kinds of examination: correspondence audits handled entirely by mail, office audits where you report to an IRS location, and field audits where a revenue agent comes to your home or business. Roughly three quarters of audits are correspondence audits, and most of those are a document request rather than an accusation.
With Form 2848 on file, you are not required to attend. Your representative attends instead, answers what was asked, and does not volunteer anything that was not. That is not a trick. Audit scope expands when a taxpayer explains too much, mentions another year, or describes a second business the examiner had not asked about, and every experienced representative has watched a one-issue audit turn into a three-year review that way.
Where a tax attorney specifically earns the call: an audit with fraud indicators, an eggshell audit where the return has a position you would rather discuss under privilege, an examiner threatening a referral, or an outcome you already know is heading to Appeals or U.S. Tax Court. Those cases start with an attorney and stay with one. A documentation audit, by contrast, is often best handled by the CPA or Enrolled Agent who can reconstruct the records fastest.
Our audit work lives at IRS audit help and audit defense, and the broader representation service at IRS tax representation. If you want to know what pulls a return in the first place, we wrote about what triggers an IRS audit.
06 · Field collection
Most IRS collection is automated. Notices generate on a schedule out of the Automated Collection System, and nobody at the IRS is thinking about you personally. A Revenue Officer case is the opposite. A Revenue Officer is a human being in a local field office with your file on their desk, a caseload they are measured on, and the authority to summons records, visit your business unannounced, and recommend seizure.
Cases get assigned to field collection for a reason: a large balance, payroll tax debt, a pattern of unfiled returns, a defaulted installment agreement, or a business that kept operating while accruing new liabilities. Payroll cases are the sharpest of these, because unpaid trust fund taxes can be assessed personally against owners, officers, and anyone with check-signing authority through the trust fund recovery penalty. That assessment starts with a Form 4180 interview, and that interview is exactly where a tax attorney belongs.
When a Revenue Officer has already made contact, the first move does not change: Power of Attorney, then transcripts, then a financial statement on Form 433-A or 433-B that is accurate and defensible before it goes anywhere near the officer. Revenue Officers generally deal with representatives professionally, and a case that arrives organized is a case that gets a collection alternative considered instead of an enforcement step.
The one thing that does not work is silence. Missed deadlines with an assigned Revenue Officer are what turn a resolvable balance into a levy. If payroll taxes are part of your case, start with the most common payroll tax issues, and if returns are missing, unfiled tax returns is the first thing to fix.
07 · The engagement
Representation is a division of labor, not a disappearing act. Here is the split, plainly.
08 · Due diligence
Tax resolution has a real problem with firms that sell hard and deliver little. Whether you end up hiring a wage garnishment attorney, an Enrolled Agent, or nobody at all, these five checks separate the two, and they work on us as well as on anyone else.
Ask which credential is actually going to work your file.
Attorney, CPA, and Enrolled Agent are the only three credentials with unlimited practice rights before the IRS. A salesperson is not one of them. Ask for the name and credential of the person who will sign your Form 2848, and verify it. Enrolled Agents can be confirmed through the IRS directory of federal tax return preparers; an attorney can be confirmed through the licensing state bar.
Be skeptical of any outcome promised before transcripts are pulled.
Nobody can tell you whether you qualify for an Offer in Compromise, or how a garnishment will resolve, before reviewing your IRS account transcripts and your actual finances. A firm that promises a settlement figure on the first call is describing a sales script, not your case.
Walk away from percentage-of-savings fees.
Tax resolution work should never be billed as a cut of what the IRS forgives. That structure gives the firm a reason to oversell the outcome. Innovative Tax Relief does not charge based on a percentage of savings or debt reduction.
Get the scope in writing before you sign anything.
The engagement should say which years are covered, which returns are being prepared, which program is being pursued, and what happens if the IRS rejects the first proposal. Vague scope is where tax resolution complaints come from.
Read the reviews and check the accreditation.
Look for reviews that describe the process rather than the outcome, and check whether the firm is accredited and how it responds to complaints. Our credentials and accreditations are published, and so are hundreds of client reviews.
Ours are published: see our accreditations and IRS credentials and our verified client reviews.
† Internal company figures through 2026. Tax debt addressed on behalf of clients. Individual results vary by case and IRS or state agency review.
Federal programs
A wage garnishment is a symptom. These are the federal programs that treat the balance underneath it, and the first thing a wage garnishment attorney or Enrolled Agent does is work out which one your numbers support. The IRS Fresh Start Program expanded access to several of them.
Frequently asked
The questions we hear most about hiring a tax attorney, releasing a garnishment or levy, and what Form 2848 actually does.
Verified review · Google
Keiner and others talked me through the process and made sure I understood exactly what was going to happen and how they would my my tax headache disappear. Amazing team that's helping me on this project. I would highly recommend this tax relief program to anyone
I had a good experience with them, Charles helped me as much as possible. He was very polite and courteous. Spoke the honest truth while trying to help me. I will never forget get his advice.
Great Customer service! When I contacted them with my tax situation they, were super! I went through 3 of these gentleman: Myron, Manny, and last my case manager, Juan Duran. They put me at ease from the beginning offering me a solution for my tax issues and answering my multiple questions I have had. I totally recommend this group!
Free consultation with our team. No obligation.
Talk to an IRS tax attorney or Enrolled Agent about your case.
Call (833) 839-9287 Free consultation
