I had a run in with the IRS not too long ago, and found the agents at the regular IRS telephone line regularly discouraged me from turning to the Taxpayer Advocate Line.

There is one other thing people could try, and I mention this knowing full well it is not an option for everyone. If you live in a place where it makes sense to go into one of the IRS’ regional offices, then do so! Agents on the phone will often times give contradictory or even flat out wrong information!

Case in point, I was on a payment plan making a payment of a little over $200 a month. I was getting toward the end of the plan, and called the general line for a payoff amount. Imagine my surprise when the woman on the phone told me my total due amount had GROWN by $600 since the last time I called 18 months earlier. No new charges, no new penalties, nothing. When I asked how that was possible, she simply replied “Interest”, but then proved unable to replicate the math. Then she sent me an indecipherable tax transcript.

So I went into my local office and spoke face to face with someone. The woman I spoke with not only confirmed the telephone agent had been wrong, she discovered my penalty an interest had been incorrectly calculated, redid the math and informed me my debt had in fact been paid off a couple months earlier. A (very) low 4 figure tax bill gone just like that.

Seriously, if you can, do it in person. If you have your facts and your paperwork straight, if you’re nice, and if you don’t play amateur constitutional lawyer and tell them why their whole department is unconstitutional, they will cut you every break they possibly can.