Paying Back Taxes | via @nytimes

The Internal Revenue Service has made it easier — though by no means automatic — for delinquent taxpayers to cut the amount they owe on back taxes.

The agency has a program it calls an “offer in compromise,” which develops payment plans for taxpayers who can demonstrate that they face problems involving ability to pay, fairness or liability.

The burden of proof rests with the taxpayer, who needs to make a payment offer, which the agency is free to reject. While it is easier than it once was to have an offer accepted, filling out the forms is no picnic.

Still, the acceptance rate for taxpayers’ offers, which was under 25 percent as recently as 2010, rose to 42 percent in 2013, according to the I.R.S.

People who demonstrate that their tax bills cannot be collected must show that they are, to put it gently, financially challenged. To receive such an agreement, the taxpayer must acknowledge a tax liability and demonstrate an inability to pay all of it, saying, in proper bureaucratic form, “Look, you can’t get blood from a stone…”

Read the entire article at The New York Times:

If You Owe Back Taxes, Try Making the I.R.S. an Offer (By CHARLES DELAFUENTE)

†Image Courtesy Great Beyond