If you are uncertain whether you are including all of your income on your return, you might consider obtaining a transcript from the IRS showing all of your wages and income reported to the agency. You never want to omit income reported to the IRS on your tax return. Not only will you receive a letter several months later requesting additional taxes to be paid, but you will be charged interest and penalties on the amounts omitted. If you do not know already, the interest and penalties charged by the IRS can be very significant over time, as much as the original tax liability, if not more. Even more importantly, the omission of income on your tax return might prompt an audit of your tax return by the IRS, a prospect never welcomed by any taxpayer.

There is always the possibility that you failed to receive 1099 or W-2 forms—particularly if you have changed your address recently—or more likely that you lost or misplaced them. Consequently, it may be prudent to determine what has been reported to the IRS. If a tax form has been incorrectly submitted, you can then request that the issuer prepare a corrected 1099 or W-2 and submit it to you and the IRS or Social Security Administration, depending on the type of form.

If it is necessary to contact the IRS on your behalf, we will need to submit a power of attorney to authorize us to retrieve your information. The Form 2848, Power of Attorney and Declaration of Representative, will be used for this purpose. Your signature on the Form 2848 allows us to receive your tax information only for the matter(s) and tax year(s)/period(s) specified on the Form 2848. If your tax return is a joint return, we will need to obtain a Form 2848 for each of you.

The IRS has a wealth of information on you in its computerized database.

Types of information available from the IRS include:

Wage and Income Transcript

- includes data from Form W-2, Form 1099 series, Form 1098, and Form 5498 series received by the IRS

Account Transcript

- includes any estimated tax payments that you made, penalties and interest assessed against you or paid by you, interest received from the IRS, adjustments made by the IRS on returns filed, your balance of outstanding tax liabilities, or if extensions or returns were received by the IRS

Tax Return Transcript

- shows most line items contained on the return as it was originally filed, including any accompanying forms and schedules

Record of Account Transcript

- a combination of the tax return and tax account transcripts containing the line items on a tax return transcript plus any adjustments. Also includes both the originally filed and amended values all on one transcript.