A couple of years ago, Will from Iowa lost his business records tax records during a tornado and has not filed them since. His carpentry business had finally gotten busy, and he just had not found the time to worry about it since. Thankfully, the IRS had not appeared to notice, which pushed the unfiled tax return issue further into the back of Will's mind.

Then, almost six months later, a notice from the IRS came from the mail. Will saw it and left it on top of the kitchen table with plans to look into it later. However, his wife was nagging him about finishing the garage and then a new customer needed her bathroom finished immediately, and shortly, the letter had been covered under a lot of papers that it had been forgotten about, Will had other tasks to try and do besides think about how to file back taxes.

Months passed and business resumed and continued to prosper. The IRS began sending certified letters, but Will and his wife disregarded the notices since they simply did not have time to look at them. Eventually, Will decided to hire a bookkeeper to figure out the numbers on his taxes for him, but he quickly lost track of any progress. The correspondence resumed and continued to appear up in their mailbox, but Will was perplexed because he thought he had taken care of the confusing problem.

Will eventually got a break one Saturday morning and went to the post office to pick up one of the letters. He was shocked to discover that the IRS now claimed that he now owed over $750,000 in back taxes according to the IRS. After re-reading the notice, a sinking apprehension started to sink in and he felt sad, humiliated, and confused. Will quickly hid the letter in the basement in order that his wife wouldn't see the letter before he had a possible opportunity to fix the problem.

Because Will didn't prepare and file his tax returns, the IRS filed and prepared his tax returns for him and asserted he made far more and owed more than he actually would have if he filed his returns properly. What Will did not know however, was that he still had a chance. All his missing books were able to be reconstructed so that his unfiled tax returns would be able to properly prepared by a real tax lawyer. The tax attorney prepared, filed his missing tax returns and this would allow his sum of taxes owed to be drastically lessened and he would have a likelihood to argue to lower down the debt according to his capacity to pay.