A few years ago, Will from Iowa lost his business records tax records in 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 problem further into to the nether reaches of Will's mind.

Nearly six weeks later, the IRS mailed a letter in the mail. Will put it on the kitchen counter and made a mental reminder to read it later that day. In spite of this, a fresh client needed the addition to her house finished when possible, and Will's wife was nagging him to finish their new garage. Soon, the notice was lost under plans and work on top of the counter, and it had been again forgotten.

A number of months went by, and business was still going strong. Certified letters sent by the IRS began arriving again, but neither Will nor his wife had time to look at them. Finally, Will hired a bookkeeper to look after things for him, but then did not have time to keep good track of the developments. The certified notices resumed and continued to come, but Will didn't know why since he had believed to have taken care of the nagging problem.

Finally, Will picked up a letter on a Saturday morning to see what was going on. He was shocked to find out of the fact that IRS said he now owed them over $500,000 in back taxes. He read and reread the letter several more times, but every time it said the same thing. Feeling sad, confused, and humiliated, Will hid the letter upstairs, hoping that his wife wouldn't discover it before he had an opportunity to take care of it.

Because Will did not prepare and file his tax returns, the IRS filed his taxes for him and claimed he earned far more and so he owed a lot more than he actually did. What Will didn't realize however, was that he nonetheless still had a an opportunity to solve the problem. All his missing books could be reconstructed in order that his unfiled tax returns would be able to properly prepared by a genuine tax attorney. This would allow his total taxes owed to become drastically lessened and he would have the chance to negotiate down the debt according to his capacity to pay.