Tax controversy is the part of tax law where the conversation has stopped going your way. The IRS or the Georgia Department of Revenue has issued an audit, a notice of deficiency, a levy, or a denial of refund — and you need someone who reads tax statutes the way a tax attorney trained at one of the Big Four reads them, not someone who handles a tax case once a year on the side. William Pereira built his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers and holds an LLM in Taxation. That is the lens we bring.
What we handle
Tax controversy is a different practice from tax preparation. Most CPAs and EAs do excellent preparation work. When an audit goes from polite to adversarial, when collections start, when a return position is challenged, the analysis becomes legal — what the statute actually says, what the regulations actually require, what the case law actually holds, and how to position the response so it does not waive arguments you may need later.
Common tax controversy matters
- IRS examination and audit defense — individual and business returns
- Notices of deficiency and Tax Court petitions
- Collection due process (CDP) hearings
- Installment agreements and offers in compromise
- Innocent spouse relief
- Penalty abatement — accuracy-related, late-filing, late-payment, trust fund recovery
- Worker classification disputes (1099 vs W-2)
- State tax disputes — Georgia Department of Revenue audits and assessments
- Voluntary disclosure of unreported income or foreign accounts
- Trust fund recovery penalty (TFRP) defense
Why tax controversy needs a tax-trained attorney
Tax law is unusual in how technical it is. The Internal Revenue Code is north of 7,000 pages. The Treasury Regulations are several times longer. Most tax controversy work is reading those documents very carefully — the kind of careful reading you learn doing returns and rulings at PwC, not the kind you pick up in CLEs.
Most personal injury firms do not handle tax. Most tax preparers do not handle controversy. We do both, because the overlap matters: settlement structure, audit defense, trust fund recovery — they all reward the same analytical discipline. When a personal injury settlement has tax implications, or when a tax case has settlement-structure implications, the same person handles it. That is uncommon enough in Atlanta to be a real advantage.
How an audit defense actually works
The first IRS letter is almost always the most important moment. Many taxpayers respond too quickly, give too much, or give the wrong things. The right first response acknowledges the letter, requests reasonable extensions, and gathers what is actually being asked for — without volunteering anything that is not. The audit's scope is set by the questions the IRS asks; expanding the scope is rarely in the taxpayer's interest.
From there, the work is documenting positions. Substantiation — receipts, contemporaneous records, mileage logs — is the daily work of audit defense. Where the law is unsettled, we identify the strongest authorities and structure the defense around them. Where the law is against us, we manage exposure and look at penalty mitigation, payment options, and where appropriate, offers in compromise.
Common questions.
What is an offer in compromise?
An offer in compromise (OIC) is an agreement with the IRS to settle a tax liability for less than the full amount owed. It is appropriate in specific situations — typically doubt as to collectibility, doubt as to liability, or effective tax administration grounds. The IRS rejects most submitted OICs because most are not properly prepared. The cases that get accepted are the ones documented carefully, with realistic financials and a defensible offer amount.
I just received an IRS audit letter. What should I do first?
Acknowledge it within the timeframe specified — usually 30 days. Do not call the agent and start answering questions before reviewing what is actually being asked. Do not provide records that go beyond the request. Read the letter for the specific issues being examined and the years involved. Then talk to a tax attorney before responding substantively.
Can I represent myself in Tax Court?
You can. The U.S. Tax Court has small-case procedures (S cases) for disputes under $50,000 per year that allow self-representation with relaxed rules. For larger amounts or more complex issues, the formal procedures apply, and the IRS is represented by experienced tax attorneys. The economics of representation matter at every level, but the analysis is the same one we walk through in the consultation.
What is the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty?
The Trust Fund Recovery Penalty (TFRP) under IRC § 6672 makes individuals personally liable for unpaid employment taxes that were withheld from employee wages. The IRS goes after the people determined to be 'responsible persons' who 'willfully' failed to remit. Both elements have specific definitions, and TFRP defense is largely about challenging the IRS's analysis on responsibility, willfulness, and the amount.