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The Internal Revenue Service is a massive “Three Letter Agency.” It’s a bureau of the Department of the Treasury and (believe it or not) one of the world’s most efficient tax administrators. In fiscal year 2020, the IRS collected almost $3.5 trillion in revenue and processed more than 240 million tax returns. It has over 90,000 employees.

It is also about as popular as Communism and Dog Catchers with most people! This makes running this most public of organizations a challenge for garnering resources and maintaining safety, stability and confidence in the revenue collection that makes this country go.

Charles “Chuck” Rettig is a Shareholder at Chamberlain Hrdlicka in the Firm’s Tax Controversy & Litigation practice and served as Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from 2018 through 2022. He shares his experience with us and some pointers in dealing with the Service.

How the IRS operates and its priorities:

The volume of work and responsibility of the Internal Revenue Service

The structure of the agency

Data Science is the Future

What it does that people may not be aware of

• Other parts of the Treasury opine on tax policy, but the agency provides guidance on workability
• Chuck as the Commissioner appeared before Congressional Committees 37 times in 4 years.
• Personality matters both internally and externally
• The Commissioner has an 11 person security detail and receives 3 credible death threats / week.

What to expect in the next years:

Legislative Uncertainty

Administrative Challenges

• The Service has almost 400 Million “clients” with huge disparities in sophistication
• Resources are always a struggle- getting bang for the buck
• Personnel departures from the Service

Prediction: Increased aggressiveness at the state level

What best practices in front of the IRS look like.

Setting up your affairs with a ling term strategy in mind

Interacting with an Examiner

Speed and Humanity

The 3 headed approach to family office planning

High end advisory work with the T&E group

The overall context in working with the structure and culture of the IRS – having a backdoor channel

Litigation support for those situations that need it.

Links

With Kelley Miller: The IRS Audits You- What’s Next?”

Transcript of the Show

Frazer Rice (00:01)
The IRS and taxation in general is in all sorts of tumult with the new administration. How to deal with the IRS, how to file your taxes, how to plan for things going forward. It’s something to think about. We have Chuck Redig on and he is a terrific resource for all of our listeners. He’s a shareholder at Chamberlain Herdlica. It is in the firm’s tax controversy and litigation department.

Frazer Rice (00:26)
Most importantly, he served as commissioner of the IRS from 2018 through 2022. So we have a little inside baseball here on how the commission works and things to think about in your own practice. So Chuck, welcome aboard.

Chuck Rettig (00:32)

Thank you for having me. It’s a privilege to be out.

Frazer Rice (00:42)
Well, it’s a treat for us to have you and a real great opportunity. First and foremost, look, the three letters IRS are scary to just about anybody who comes in contact with them on a personal basis. Maybe break down a little bit how the IRS operates and what its priorities are.

Background

Chuck Rettig (01:01)
Yeah, you know, when I went on board, somebody high up in Treasury, and I’m basically a kid from Los Angeles and Irish headquarters in Washington, D.C., and somebody from Treasury said to me, you know, congratulations, it’s a Senate-confirmed position, and you are one of the five most powerful people in the United States, but you are absolutely the most hated. And I remember shaking his hand going, okay, thank you, you know, and this is something I’m still interested in doing.

Reflection

Looking back, I look back with a lot of pride.for the opportunity. basically a tax guy from a tax practice, 36 years in tax and state planning and other related things in one firm in Los Angeles, the opportunity to go on board of the IRS. And if you will make a difference. This was in 2018, which was about a year and a half-ish, right? Depending upon when you say COVID started and gave us the opportunity to go in and see what we can do to change things. But I always kept in my head.

the anxiety people have for the IRS. At all levels, you could be the most sophisticated tax professional, or you could be the taxpayer on the street. Individual, corporate, everything in between. And everybody interacts with the internal revenues of us. The IRS interacts with more Americans than any other public or private sector organization on the planet. And for a variety of reasons, there’s a lot of challenges for the agency. But the operation itself,

The physical part of the operation, I’ll just kind of give you a once over, is headquarters is in Washington DC, 1111 Constitution. I moved to Washington DC, had an apartment a few blocks away from there, thinking, oh, I’ll just walk to work.

The IRS Commissioner and Security

And one of the first things you realize is, okay, well, the commissioner is not going to be out in public by themselves, tying into this most hated thing. had what mostly was an 11 person protection detail with you at all times, averaged one to three to five, what they call credible death threats per month. And it’s hard to adjust to, right? It’s like, if you will, for a federal government salary, you really have to want to do government service and make a difference when you see the things that most people are not aware of. But headquarters, Washington, DC, the…

The Size and Scope of the Service

Headquarter ability is 1.2 million square feet. You know, there were about 85,000 employees when I was there. Currently, it’s about 100,000 employees, 519 offices throughout the world in terms of what we think of in terms of operations. So I was there in 2018 to 2022, and the commissioner has a term, my term expired November 12th, 2022 by statute. But just during the term that I was there,

IRS implemented seven major tax acts, right? Starting with TCJA in December 2017. So in five years, you’re redoing all your systems, right? You have to figure out how you have to code the systems for changes in tax law. And in addition to that, you gotta be prepared. So you redo some of your systems and put them on the shelf so you’re ready to go with the changes, but everything you think is gonna become tax law doesn’t. So tremendous effort to try to get things moving and get it operating, if you will, behind the scenes. And then, you know.

Frazer Rice (04:28)
And so, you were put in charge of this, the scale is massive. You’re dealing with essentially one of the largest corporations in the country, even though it’s a government agency. Chronically underfunded, as we always hear in the news, and so you don’t have the resources to do what you want to do, either technologically or people-wise, and so on. And then you’re called to account for why things go wrong when they do or how awful you are on a daily basis because you’re the you’re the you’re the bearer of bad news oftentimes. How did you adjust to that?

Job Requirements

Chuck Rettig (05:01)
So I think you have to have thick skin. You have to know why you’re there. We were there to serve the country, right? What a lot of people said is, hey, Chuck followed his son into government service. My son is a major in the United States Army. When I went on board, my son was deployed. He’s deployed three times. And sort of if you will serve in the country and look at the flag, I do pause when I look at the flag.

DC is different than pretty much any other part of the United States. Everybody points fingers. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody takes accountability. And they all want to send out a tweet of, we just grilled the IRS chief. I testified in Congress about 37 times, Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee. And a lot of that also was during COVID, where we had tremendous struggles during COVID, as the rest of the world did, right? And so,

Frazer Rice (05:53)
Huh. Right.

COVID and the IRS

Chuck Rettig (05:57)
You just really have to hunker down, move forward. And by nature, the commissioner of the Inter-Northern Service, the only person who could ask me to leave would be the president of the United States. And I served equal terms under President Trump and President Biden and relied on the fact that, you know, if they want to fire me, they can fire me. But my lines inside to the employees were, we’re going to do what we’re going to do.

We’re going to do the right thing. Very impartial, non-political at all.and we’re going to move forward. And then I would always add in, if somebody wants to fire me, they can fire me. Of course, I would add in and send me back to my home in Los Angeles, to my friends, you know, get me out of the snow in DC. And then other people come in and go, it sounds like you’re trolling to get terminated.

I go, no, but when I think about home compared to I think about DC, you know, maybe I’m ready. But that was my, if you will call it. My son in the military has a thing. If you think you’re all that, bring it, right?

The Personal Touch

And I adopted that, I adopted that for the IRS. If people wanna take shots at us, if you will verbally, make your comments. I will say I got counseled on when I testified that the staffers for some of the senators thought I was intimidating the senators when I wanted to testify. Senate finance has 28 senators. And I said, it’s one against 28, how can I intimidate them? They said, well, sir, you.

You have a look and then you throw tone if you disagree. I said, go back up there and you tell them they won’t get the look, they won’t get tone. Two things. If they, as they’re asking a question, put out accurate facts, right? And then stay away from the employees. That’s all I’m asking for. Accurate facts, it up, your question is, and then ask me your question and do not go after the employees. They won’t see tone or, or,

Frazer Rice (07:55)
or faces. Right.

Chuck Rettig (07:55)
or the look, right?

Resources

But I felt my job was really to get it right in the trenches, not to, if you will, be swayed by somebody who has a title, senator or congressman, is most of the folks we interacted with. I served under Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Yellen. They really gave us free rein to do our thing. And we did. And in the same time as all this is going on, keep in mind,

Iris maintains two level five computing centers, one of the largest call centers in the world, one of the largest law firms in the world, one of the largest processing sites in the world. So you can start to see the 63 separate operating systems. You can start to see how technology and the complaints the agency has about technology, technology becomes important when you want to bring it into 2024, 2025, 2026, and technology requires money, right? So the idea is

Frazer Rice (08:58)
Well, the crazy part is, your largest processing, largest law firm, whatever, you also have 360 million clients. I don’t care how large they are, the scale and the many to many relationship that you’re dealing with here.

Chuck Rettig (09:05)
Yes, exactly.

Well, and think of that, you know, the taxpayers, We had, the IRS, we had the most sophisticated individual and corporate taxpayers on the planet, just by far. We also had some of the most, and I don’t mean this in a disparaging way, but the most unsophisticated individual taxpayers who live in an area where they don’t have a smartphone, they don’t have, you know, a laptop, they don’t have wifi access.

Inclusion as a Revenue Raiser

And IRS has to service everybody. Then I’ll add into that what was very important to me was the concept that, I’ll just say, I used say to the employees, where do you live? And I said, don’t say America. You live in the United States of America. I think you know, Fraser, but some people may not. My father was born in Germany and my wife is born in Vietnam.

The in-laws ultimately made it out of Vietnam. My wife got to the country, she was a refugee, a boat person, nine months in a refugee camp in 1981, she escaped at age 17. My in-laws live in Little Saigon in Southern California, do not speak English. And so when I would say to the employees, where do you live? You live in the United States of Most of us can go back one or two generations and somebody culturally identifies with a different country. So for the conversation about sophisticated and unsophisticated individual and corporate.

Languages

There’s also, there’s 170 languages fluently spoken in the United States. When I got on board, by and large, was operating in English. And we did a big push to get into other languages. Again, trying to knock down this anxiety factor. And a lot of the folks who come to the United States come from hostile countries, Vietnam, Cuba, Hungary, Ethiopia, you know, there’s a list, right? And so if you can get… in the language of the people who are trying to get it right, with people from their community and send, you know, bring those people into the send those people back. We had a decent shot of building trust and confidence in the IRS. And I’ll just say, know, lot of people say, well, what are some of the things you’re proud about?

Well, it is, you we could go on for eight hours, but among the top liners, we did the 2019 Form 1040 in Spanish. First time IRS did a individual in context return a really significant form in a language other than English. And they’re ultimately going to have those forms in eight different languages. And so there was pushback. People said, you know, cost us a lot more to do this in another language. And my response was, well, one, we’re not a profit making activity, although gross revenue when I was there was $4.9 trillion a year. That’s 96 % of the gross revenue in United States of America.

Back Home

And if you just think, if you go up 1 % because maybe the folks that you get into their language get it right, that’s $50 billion a year without doing anything other than getting into their language. But one of the comments I made internally when people pushed back about the cost of going into another language was, this should help take the pressure off our phones and off our mail. Because I would say, my father-in-law is 90.

And I said, so every year he files his tax return, he sends in his $8. If in looking at it, he thinks, it should have been six, he’s going to call us every Thursday and ask for his two bucks back. And he’s going to send us a letter every Friday and ask for his two bucks back. And, and he doesn’t speak or write or whatever English. So we’re going to have to deal with that on our end. Whereas if we get it right, if we get our guidance into simple terms, things that people understand, we can actually, we should be able to bridge part of that gap and, and move forward quickly. So that was significant.

I will say, you know, the employees, the workforce embraced that a thousand percent. I’m not smart enough to see some of the benefits we got, but I will tell you that when we did the 1040 in Spanish, a significant percentage of our employees identify with, you know, Hispanic in some form. All of a sudden I became their guy, right? Like they could see me respecting their community.

Integration with Other Policy

Frazer Rice (13:26)
Well, and it’s a major component of policy elsewhere. mean, whether it’s immigration or otherwise, mean, you’ve got to be ready to meet the people that live in the country where they are, especially when you’re revenue, which in my opinion is important, especially when you’re trying to fund things, making it easier to intersect with that.

Chuck Rettig (13:34)
Yeah.

Well, they are in circles.

Yeah.

Frazer Rice (13:53)
Service. In theory, think as long as you’re not dealing with a language that only has a couple hundred speakers, that should increase things as you move forward.

Chuck Rettig (14:03)
Yep.

We had in fiscal 22, which was my last fiscal year, government’s on a September 30 fiscal year. We had 90 million visits on our non-English speaking pages of iris.gov that by and large did not exist when we came on board. And again, for the folks who want to go online and do it themselves, getting into their language. And the key was

If you will, I refer to myself as a single syllable guy. I’m a public school kid out of LA. Only person in my family go to college. The key was not using, if you will, the equivalent of Shakespearean English in our, when we go into other languages, but something that real people could understand. That was critical because the purpose of getting there was to touch base with people, knock down some of the anxiety, and hopefully they get it right when they send it in the first time.

Technology and the IRS

And if it comes in right the first time, the automated systems, 98 % of the 1040s, a set of eyes never look at it. It just sails through the system. If they get something a little bit out of kilter, then it goes to a filter, our people look at it, notices happen and stuff like that. So the goal was to streamline the filings for everyone and then free up resources so we can spend more time on areas that obviously there were not enough people for, but we needed to.

We hired left and right, as many as we could, data scientists. And as we were talking before, you said, that’s one of the things that surprised you. Like most people, or like most tax folks, I saw the IRS as a tax administrative agency, processing returns, collection action, issuing a lot of refunds, issuing a lot of refundable credits and such, examinations and all that.

Data Science

Really, you need a lot of data scientists as you start to really rely on technology and you modify your technology. And IRS has compliance data warehouses, what’s called Insight CDW. It’s one of largest data warehouses in any organization that has three letters that you’ve heard about. I met a lot of three letter organizations that I didn’t know existed. And I met a lot of people that don’t exist. You know, you go into a room, there’s…

Frazer Rice (16:23)
Guys in suits with pistols.

Chuck Rettig (16:27)
There’s five guys named Sam and nobody has a last name, okay? This is unique. But really the idea being that if you can streamline and make it user friendly, my terminology on there is Apple friendly, right? Ergonomic, acceptable from all facets of the organization. What a of people refer to more sophisticated than me, we call it the private sector experience. Hey, can I help you today? You know, when they answer the phone people at Iris were phenomenal given the lack of resources they had. But data scientists are behind all of that. And so we hear about hiring people for the phone. We hear about hiring people for examinations or collection or HR. There wasn’t so much talk about all the data scientists, but inside they really, they make a difference for the internal interactions as well as external interactions.

Cybersecurity

And having said that, I just want to touch one thing that I like to throw out, because it helps understand the size of the operation, but also the issues around it. While I was there, we averaged between 1.4 and 1.6 billion sophisticated cyber attacks per year. Government-speak, a sophisticated cyber attack means it’s essentially North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China. And our entire campus is designed to attack

US systems, we were responsible for ours for treasury. But also we had information sharing agreements with at my time, I it was 83 countries around the world. If you have taxpayers here or there and information goes electronically and it’s the weakest link here. So we not only had to protect if you were the home front, we had to protect 83 systems in foreign countries. And you know, you did not hear hey, there was this large bump in the theory, I guess, be somebody could get in and possibly think that they could. I don’t think they can, but if they got in, trigger billions of dollars of refunds. And we looked at that, and that’s obviously, without saying, important. But beyond that, what my pitch was to the folks there who were phenomenal, the emotional component of this, right?

If somebody gets into the financial operating system, the United States government, if a foreign country is to get into that, the emotions for people in the country will suffer. You you want to think we’ve got the thickest armor and we’re there and we’re prepared. You don’t want to think that, you know, an eight year old in China got through or whatever. And not thinking on China. I’m just telling you, we know, we know.

The Service and Congress

Frazer Rice (19:13)
I don’t know, but, no question about that. As you look at, we’ve now flipped back to a Trump administration and the IRS, we have sort of Doge over here, which is evaluating things and Elon throws tweets at the IRS and we’ve already know that it’s not as well resources that really should be given the importance of its function. How do you view what we’re looking at? Either both legislatively or administratively for the IRS in this new administration.

Chuck Rettig (19:46)
So the most significant role I played at the IRS really was going for the money, right? I went up to the hill left and right. We need timely, consistent, multi-year funding. were, the agency had been starved forever. There’d been a hiring freeze from 2011 to 2018. I walk in the door 2018 and it’s duct tape on the carpets, duct tape holding people’s laptops together.

I know, folks by large in the field, if they wanted to pin some paper on their own, they got to go to Office Depot kind of a thing. yeah, that’s one thing, but also it’s the emotions of what you’re asking your employees to do. So my significant effort was to go for the money. We went for the money. I started out doing what every other commissioner said. We need timely, consistent multi-year funding. We have no money, you know, and it kind of drones on on the hill. And the response almost routinely was, well, we don’t think you’re efficient enough, right?

Talking to Senators

And I offered for certain amounts of money, billions and billions of dollars extra every year, I offered any oversight they wanted. know, Tuesday at 10 o’clock, I’ll be in all of your offices and explain what we did since last Tuesday kind of a thing. Where it shifted, and I think this is important and people need to see this. So I have a kid in the military who wears a military uniform with a flag on his shoulder. The IRS brings in 96 % of the gross revenue in the United States of America.

The Importance of Collecting

The federal government does not build aircraft carriers internally, doesn’t build bridges internally and all that. They contract that. So my comments went from IRS kind of, this is what we do to showing how IRS supports the country, right? And that we’re important was the line, IRS is important. Everything we put out had red, white and blue stars and stripes on it. If you will, we sort of branded.

the IRS, right, as red, white and blue, not putting this on the military level, but they want to support the military, you got to fund it. That really, I think changed the way a lot of people looked at it. COVID changed, we were the only operating federal agency during COVID. We issued 475 million payments, totaling $830 billion in three crunches, all in record time. So all of that came in, and IRS August 16, 2022 got $80 billion of

IRA funding allocated how Congress wanted it allocated. The majority going to enforcement, $45.6 billion going to enforcement. The reasoning behind going to enforcement really wasn’t, gee, we really love the IRS, is its scores. If you put a dollar into enforcement, you can get $10 or $11 back elsewhere. Now Congress can go spend $10 or $11. That’s what’s going on there, where it’s the rest of the money, modernization,

Frazer Rice (22:28)
Right, sure.

Chuck Rettig (22:38)
Taxpayer services, operations support, didn’t score so they could go after more money. So Congress has, they left alone, they’ve left alone a lot of, sorry.

The Service and Tax Policy

Frazer Rice (22:46)
As we as we know, that’s OK. As we think about it, how involved is the IRS get in the form formulation of tax policy? I’m sure Congress comes to you and says, hey, you you’re in charge of implementing this. Is it doable? But do you go in and have an opinion on good ways or efficient ways to raise money or places to places to attack, for lack of better word?

Chuck Rettig (22:57)
So, that’s a Treasury role. We’re just tax administrators. So Treasury works with the Hill and also an administration on tax policy. What we were able to achieve, which was also critical, we were able to get in the room when Congress, Treasury, and everybody else decided what would, how, be taxable, et cetera, et cetera. We were able to get into the room to help draft the legislation for what we could administer. So rather than setting us up to fail,

Frazer Rice (23:12)
Mm-hmm. Got it.

Complexity

Chuck Rettig (23:39)
We want provisions that we actually can administer in tax code, right? And we were instrumental in getting that done in part. A lot of credit there goes to the then chief counsel of the IRS, who was also a Senate confirmed position. Mike Desmond, he did not see the role as chief counsel as just the lawyer in the law firm for the IRS.

But when you send a Senate confirmed person up to the Hill to go in a room with Senate staffers and talk about what we can do, people listen and Mike’s great guy and was in to try to make a difference. He came on board shortly after I did and our theories was we’re gonna sit in our office and go look how cool we are. We’re commissioner and chief counsel. Let’s get our hands dirty. Let’s go to work. So it’s a thing. You don’t want the tax administrator deciding tax policy.

Best Practices

Frazer Rice (24:27)
That makes sense to me. What’s your best advice to people who are in front of the IRS, either as far as setting up their affairs or then interacting with them when it’s time to talk to the IRS or if you’re being audited or there’s some by-play in between?

Chuck Rettig (24:46)
So know today that the IRS has the technology, and this is kind of what we’ve been talking about. They have the technology in place to uncover, if you will, issues of noncompliance that weren’t even remotely possible just a few years ago. So they’re very data-driven. In the digital asset virtual currency space, there are no anonymous transactions. There are no random audits. The examinations that happen happen for a reason. It’s either

The IRS is running a campaign on a specific type of issue. In the high wealth world, you have art donations, you have business aircraft and such. So it’s either a specific type of issue or it’s a type of taxpayer. know, high wealth taxpayers, complex partnerships, large corporations, multi-tiered partnerships, those are all high on the radar screen for enforcement presence. Backing into the beginning of question, so what do you do? You do your homework. You do your homework on fun.

Pattern Recognition

And it’s not unusual for IRS to engage and find out that maybe it wasn’t a tax return that doesn’t track to if you have a partnership agreement or the LLC agreement or something, particularly in closely held family type operations. know, entity needs money, mom and dad put money in. Where did the capital accounts adjust accordingly, Effectively, if not, you might have a transfer of wealth from mom and dad to children just by that act alone. And so agents are trained to look for that. THE BEST EXAMINATION IS THE ONE THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN.

And then number two, the one that you’re prepared for. The agents are doing their job. The training for an agent is not to get in and make a lifetime endeavor out of this. Get in, get a sense of feel, if you will, and then get out. And so there’s a marginal return. So it goes like this. And so about here, they should be getting out.and the longer they stay in, they don’t get a more significant adjustment. But agents are people and coming really to the beginning, question is, I’ve found in now 44 years of interacting with IRS five of which were from the inside, I’ll just tell you, maintain the appearance of reasonableness at all times, stay professional. The agents are trying, they’re doing their best. Some of the questions may just make no sense to you, right?

Checklists

And it may just be a checklist that they have. By the way, in the high wealth world, there’s enough out there now, you global high wealth, the information document requests that they roll out with in an audit. want all this information. I would say if you’re on the front end of, you know, involved in preparing returns for wealthy clients, ought to take a look at one of those because that’s going to roll out quickly. Better to have, you know, a file or digital file that has that stuff and you’re kind of ready to go. I’ll tell you.

in thousands and of specialized agents of the IRS, having the right thing in the right place on the return. It’s like reading a book. Can you read the language or do you stumble on something? They look at a tax return like we would look at a novel or a magazine and they glance through it. Then when they hit something that’s either in the wrong place, it’s called the wrong thing, it’s a bit of an issue to them. You don’t want them to slow up. They go look.

You don’t want them to slow up. You want them to go fast. And then if they find something, you should be hopeful. If it’s a mistake, that it’s only in the year they’re looking at, because they’ll immediately go to the prior year. They should be looking always at three years, the year of the exam, the next year, and the year before. And when you have pattern that’s a mistake, and using quotes around the word mistake, when you have pattern that’s a mistake and it’s always in the taxpayer’s favor,

When the Puzzle Becomes Personal

It’s really when they start to dig in, right? And remember, know, tax professionals sign these returns, prepare these returns. Most agents don’t have private sector experience. So the idea of, and I would routinely say, listen, on the outside, a client is somebody who always gives you everything you want in a timely manner, exactly the format you want. And then I would go, that doesn’t exist, right? Tax professionals.

are up against deadlines, they’re trying to put all this together. They got a lot of people who are procrastinators. know, somebody’s thinking October 15th, so they must be the only person in the world who’s gonna give their guy the stuff on October 15th. And I said, remember how these things come together. And then I pitched another one that wasn’t as universally accepted, but something to think about. I said, the second question the agent should ask, other than good morning, how you doing? It should be,

Being Upfront

In preparing for this examination, did you notice anything that you want to tell me? And my third or so week on board, I said that to the chief of exams. said, I’ve never understood why you just don’t roll out with that. Concept being, is there something you want to tell me? And then the agent should say, what you put on the table right now, there’ll be no penalties for the adjustment. You’re keeping me from having to do it. I get it that things happen. I’ll use word mistakes, but we don’t say that really.

Frazer Rice (29:59)
It’s a type of thing where you want to make their job easier and be ready for explanations of things that may be weird speed bumps along their thought pattern there.

Chuck Rettig (29:59)
But yeah. thousand percent and remember they’re people, right? So they don’t get graded on, they got a big adjustment or this or that. They get graded on how quickly they go through a return. The data says which returns have are more likely to have potential for adjustment, but that doesn’t mean that every return you look at is in that vein. So, you know, examination and interacting with agents, the appearance of cooperativeness, appearance of reasonableness.

Stay Uncomplicated

Trying to explain things and often the agents can have no clue about the type of business operation that’s involved, right? Or the financial nature of the financial transactions involved. I wouldn’t get too far in detail trying to explain some real sophisticated thing to a person with the IRS. I would do it by analogy, right? Find something that we all understand in our daily lives. Say this is kind of how it works.

You’re familiar with whatever. you know, this thing, that’s how this system works. They don’t need to know how to duplicate the business activities of the taxpayer. They need to get a modest comfort level that what’s in the return is appropriate and agents stereotype, right? So if you come at them hard, don’t expect an easy resolution. You know, my wife, as I said, from Vietnam, she was an auditor for Franchise Tax Board in California, residency auditor for like 12 years.

Rudeness . . . Not a Good Idea

And she and every other residency owner can tell you stories where somebody says, listen, little lady, let me explain this to you. Exactly. You know, I’m so much better and smarter than you. Let me explain how this works. you know, you just kind of think, why would you go there? But they do hear it. And so I’m not saying take them to lunch, but I’m saying treat them like you’re going to be treated. Yeah, exactly.

Frazer Rice (31:48)
That always works: Be reasonable.

One of the things, especially as we move up the ladder in complexity, in terms of staffing the advice around you, whether it’s your accountant, your tax preparer, your lawyer, if it gets to that point, is not only having the right people from creating the transaction, getting the compliance right, et cetera, but also having the people who are used to either litigating or dealing in a pure legal sense with the IRS and then having someone with let’s say the back channel or relationship with the IRS as part of that, that that’s a good way to go or to think about staffing your own personal affairs as you sort of get up the food chain. Does that make sense?

Staffing your tax team

Chuck Rettig (32:49)
Yeah,

I have to tell you, so, you my first six years, I was not on the controversy side. was transactional tax person, tax lawyer, you know, handling some of those sophisticated stuff out there. And then branch was doing both. And it floors me how seldom people call in, if you will, the firefighter to see is the house flameproof, right? Kind of a thing. You know, what’s your look at this?

Or if they came at us, how would you approach a response to them before the return goes in? And my personal reaction, this isn’t like saying, hey, create business for us, but a set of eyes who’ve been in the trenches, who’ve been in the courtroom, who’ve been in the appeals courtroom, who know how the government thinks, invaluable to go. Usually it’s just a little tweaking here and there. It’s that tweaking that really the examinations are gonna…

Get in . . . Get Out . . . Fast

It’s that tweaking that makes those examinations flow smoothly. I just think sometimes, it’s the old thing, pressure. I’ve drafted a lot of things in my career, 42 years, 43 years of practice. Early on somebody said, draft it, set it aside, and come back and look at it. So I do that, I come back and look at it. And my first response is to myself, who drafted this thing? I’m in love with

Frazer Rice (34:14)
I think we’re all like that.

Chuck Rettig (34:16)
I’m in love with it on Wednesday. It’s a masterpiece. I wish my mom was still alive. She’d be so proud of me. And on Friday, I look at it and think, what was I thinking? And that’s in this world. you’re representing a client. Do you want to do your best for the client? People who do what we do are a quick study. You’ve been in those trenches that long. You start to know exactly where they’re going to go, how they’re going to go, what they’re going to look at.

And sometimes it’s just a simple thing that sets them off in one direction or another. And you want to get through this activity quickly. If you really want to save money, get in and get out. And then the other thing, and for clients, what you want to provide the client is certainty, right? Getting out gives them certainty. Having an examination linger, even if somebody’s reporting the agent doesn’t know what they’re doing, et cetera, et cetera. In the meantime, that client can’t go on and…

Frazer Rice (34:58)
No, speed is key.

Speed

Chuck Rettig (35:17)
Realistically conduct a lot of business activities. Cause if you will, the fear, what we talked about in the beginning, the fear, the anxiety of the government and what if the government takes a left turn and comes in heavy on us on some issue. Now I’ve got at least mentally set aside some amount of money to possibly pay it, but also to fight it. Whereas if you can close it down today, quickly, you give that client the comfort to go forward in their own world.

And unfortunately, I’ve been involved in things. I’ve seen businesses break up and I’ve seen marriages and families break up because some people miss her or miss America. can’t function with the iris sits doorstep, right? Even if all the reports are good. Let alone there is a mistake.

Frazer Rice (36:05)
Well, that kind of fighting and litigation is just a drain. And at some point, you want to graduate to work on different and fun problems, not that.

Chuck Rettig (36:13)
Nobody will.

I used to have clients come in and I’ve seen some of it since I’ve come back and I’m with Chamberlain come in and you know, we want you because you you’re going to be able to slay the government. my now my typical response is, so my wife and I have four children, they’re through college. You’re not going to have to pay my kids college education. I had somebody recently say they wanted me want us to go biblical on the IRS. were so right.

Frazer Rice (36:45)
No.

Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape

Chuck Rettig (36:46)
And I said, well, we’ll revisit that, but I can just tell you, that’s not what’s going to happen. You’re going to hear at some point me say to you, this is how we get it resolved. And I can do it economically. You know, I was an economics major at UCLA. I can tell you why, but I’m also going to tell you for your own sanity why you’re going to do it. And the comment has always been the same. And think your tax controversy folks should routinely bring this in. Better to pay them than to pay us. You pay off the government, right? What you were going to pay us, you put it in the kitty.

It’s not such a big difference, but you’re buying certainty with that. We think we’re right. The line is, if your name’s in a caption, it hasn’t been a good experience. And I tell clients, if we become best friends, it’s not a good experience. We were involved too quickly. And we really pride ourselves, if you will, on the surgical strike. Take a look. What are the things to go after with government and controversy, madam, and try to put that to rest. And you see the rest of the case just evaporates.

Outro

Frazer Rice (37:47)
Really cool stuff. Chuck, how do listeners and watchers find you?

Chuck Rettig (37:53)
So the same way that when I got my government phone, they got handed to me, IRS phone, there was a message on it, I played the message, and I found out that the FBI was about to arrest me for failure to pay taxes. But like, how do the spammers get my IRS phone number, right? Yeah, so you can just Google Chuck Reddick, R-E-T-T-I-G, or former IRS commissioner. I’m very proud to be on board Chamberlain Hurdlicka.

We have over 100 tax lawyers on board. We’ve got, you know, a whole estate group and high wealth and family office and all of that. you know, coming out of government, I had 25 or 30 or more opportunities to join all types of professional practices, as you can imagine, right? I’m essentially the only tax commissioner in recent history to be a tax guy and then go back into private practice. So…

Nuance

The question is, how did you pick Chamberlain? I have a quick answer. It’s not just me, but it’s the people. There’s dozens of people that I’ve known for decades. And you want to work with people you want to work with. I found out about Chamberlain and that’s how I ended up with Chamberlain. And like I said, we pride ourselves on surgical strikes, getting in, getting out. that’s my reaction to who folks want to work with, tax professionals and who you want to help.

I represent your clients and it’s important, you know, and we see it, you know, I, we don’t go with thundering in, Hey, I used to be commissioner. Let me explain how you’re doing. That’s the, that’ll be a commissioner version of listen, little lady, let me explain to you. You know, we’re very subtle on, on that. I’ll just, you know, if we’re at the closing level, say, when I was leaving, a lot of people said to me, what do you think folks at the IRS think about you?

Frazer Rice (39:36)
Heh.

Chuck Rettig (39:48)
I said, well, I’d hope that 95 % of them would tell you that I had their back a thousand percent, because I did. I went in for the tax professional community, the taxpayer community, tax administration in general, and the IRS workforce, and see if we can pull it together and be better.

Frazer Rice (40:05)
Really cool stuff. Chuck, I really appreciate you being on and look forward to seeing how the IRS operates in the new administration and going forward.

Chuck Rettig (40:13)
Fingers crossed.