Complaint Review: Law Offices Of Roni Lynn Deutch - Sacramento California

This rebuttal is completely unbelievable. First of all, whatever happened to client confidentiality?. I think he broke the law in just posting the details of the clients case. I'm going to forward a copy to the Sacramento Bar Association. Roni Lynn Deutch is a rip off artist. You can negotiate an "Offer in Compromise" yourself with the IRS. It is based on a simple formula which is based on what you can afford. They deduct standard expenses from your income and assets. What's left over they will take on an installment basis. It's very fair considering you are dealing with IRS. You can also file a request for installment payments yourself. They generally always approve this. You can also have yourself classified as "uncollectable" if you have low income and high expenses. They are only authorized to take "left over" so if your expenses exceed your income and levying wages would create a hardship for you - you are uncollectible. Do yourself a favor. File all your returns and call the IRS yourself or have a CPA do it. NOT this rip off law firm. The biggest mistake people make is to think that they can get out of paying taxes and getting something for nothing. You can't. But you CAN help yourself where the IRS is concerned.

To Whom It May Concern: This correspondence responds to Pamelas letter posted on your web site on May 26, 2003. We are grateful for this opportunity to respond to Pamelas claims. Moreover, we are positive that after the facts set forth below are read, that you and your readers will conclude that Pamelas claims are unfounded. Although each of the topics raised in the May 26, 2003 letter is addressed infra, we believe it will be helpful to provide a general overview of our practice, the process and procedures we follow in the tax cases we handle. We handle only tax cases. We represent taxpayers who have arrearages on their Federal taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Our practice consists exclusively of offering and providing two services to taxpayers: the Offer in Compromise (OIC) and the Installment Agreement. It is important to note, that we attempt to keep IRS collection activity at bay in the context of pursuing the OIC or Installment Agreement for each of our clients. Specifically, we notify the IRS that we are preparing an OIC or Installment Agreement for our clients, and request that collection activity be suspended until our clients OIC or Installment Agreement is resolved. As you are aware, we advertise our services to the public. Taxpayers with tax problems respond to these advertisements by contacting our office. A representative of our office then contacts the inquiring taxpayer to offer more information about our services, and to gather some initial information about the taxpayers tax problem and current financial circumstances. If the taxpayer indicates an interest in retaining the firm during this initial telephone contact or contacts, the representative will gather a substantial amount of financial information in order to determine whether the taxpayers financial circumstances and particular tax problem are such that we can help the taxpayer by negotiating either an OIC or an Installment Agreement. If the information gathered over the telephone in the pre-retention interview indicates that we can help the taxpayer, and if the taxpayer indicates that he or she wants to retain our services, then we mail out the first round of forms to be filled out and returned to our office. Once we receive our clients completed financial information, we review and analyze that information to begin working on the OIC or an Installment Agreement as the case may be. With this general factual background in mind, we have set forth the following specific response regarding Pamelas unfounded business allegations. Pamela claims that we failed to provide her with meaningful legal services because she believes we did nothing for her. This statement is completely false. In January 2001, Pamela retained our firm to prepare, file and negotiate an Installment Agreement with the IRS. An Installment Agreement is a program through which taxpayers who owe back taxes to the IRS can enter into a contract with the IRS, which specifies the agreed upon monthly payment amount. On January 30, 2001, we sent Pamela her initial documents regarding the Installment Agreement program and the forms that she needed to prepare, complete, and return to our firm. These items included a Fee Agreement, Form 433A Collection Information Statement for Individuals and Form 2848 Power of Attorney. We requested Pamelas completed information by March 5, 2001. When we did not receive the requested information we sent Pamela a second letter dated March 7, 2001 requesting the missing information. We received Pamelas information on March 12, 2001. After thoroughly reviewing Pamelas information we determined that her Form 433A Collection Information Statement was incomplete because she failed to answer all the questions. Moreover, Pamela failed to provide all the required attachments. We sent Pamela correspondence dated March 16, 2001 enclosing her Form 433A Collection Information Statement requesting her to complete the highlighted sections. We informed Pamela that this information was required in order to determine her lowest possible Installment Agreement amount. We received Pamelas information on April 4, 2001. On April 6, 2001, we received correspondence from the IRS regarding an intent to levy notice sent to Pamela. Taking immediate action, we sent the IRS correspondence dated April 6, 2001 requesting a collection hold on tax years 1998 and 1999. We sent Pamela correspondence dated April 6, 2001 advising her on this development. After analyzing Pamelas financial information we sent her correspondence dated May 9, 2001 advising her how we determined her gross monthly income and monthly expenses. We requested Pamela to review our calculations and to notify us with any changes and or corrections. Pamela sent us correspondence dated May 15, 2001 advising us on changes to her financial situation. On June 20, 2001 we sent Pamela correspondence advising her on how we determined her current gross monthly income and monthly expenses. Furthermore, we informed Pamela that we would aggressively negotiate an Installment Agreement with the IRS in the amount of $260.00 per month. We informed Pamela that this payment would be for approximately 60 months. Moreover, we informed Pamela that penalties and interest would continue to accrue while she made her monthly payments. Since penalties and interest continue to accrue it is difficult to determine the exact number of months a taxpayer will have to make payments on their Installment Agreement. This is why our letter of June 20 stated that Pamela would have approximately 60 months and did not give her an exact time frame. We received correspondence from Pamela on July 6, 2003 authorizing us to negotiate an Installment Agreement with the IRS. We contacted the IRS on July 9, 2001 and negotiated an Installment Agreement on Pamelas behalf in the amount of $250.00. According to the IRS, Pamela owed approximately $14,000.00 in back taxes. Based on this amount, a monthly payment in the amount of $250.00 should satisfy her back tax liability in approximately 60 months. We sent Pamela correspondence dated July 9, 2001 advising her on this development. Again, we never told Pamela a definite time frame on when her back tax liability would be paid in full. Rather, we informed Pamela that her monthly payment would be for approximately 60 months. As you can see, we have competently and diligently worked on Pamelas back tax liability since she retained our law firm. Furthermore, we never informed Pamela that her back tax liability would be satisfied in 60 months. Unfortunately, Pamela failed to pay attention to our letters of June 20, 2001 and July 9, 2001 which informed her that her payments would be for approximately 60 months. Pamela contacted our office on February 12, 2003 via telephone and requested verification on why her back tax liability would not be satisfied within 60 months. Once again, we informed Pamela that our letters of June 20, 2001 and July 9, 2001 did not give a definite time frame on when her payments would cease. We informed Pamela that she could contact the IRS if she had further questions regarding her existing Installment Agreement.