The Pattie Gentile Show as heard on WADK Radio Ep 27

The "Fighting the Good Fight Podcast" is now a weekly radio program! Heard Saturday evening's at 6 and again Sunday morning at 10 at www.wadk.com or 1540AM Newport RI.

Host Patricia Gentile continues "Defending Taxpayers & Solving Their Tax Problems". With this new format, The Pattie Gentile Show will be your weekly appointment with Host Pattie Gentile & her guest experts as they discuss the latest tax news, issues and cutting-edge strategies to resolve and prevent tax problems.

Here on episode 27, we welcome Larry Heinkel Tax Attorney at TaxProblemSolver.com & TaxDischargeDeterminator.comThought Leader, Lecturer, author HowTo Eliminate Taxes With Bankruptcy !

Enjoy and tune in on WADK.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

This is Patricia Gentile, founder of New England Tax Relief and host of the Patty Gentile Show. A client once wrote me, quote, my husband and I found ourselves in debt to the IRS for $167,000. I had contacted a company that said they would help. After I paid them $6,000, I found out that they took my money and ran. I was desperate and searched for a local tax attorney and found Patricia. She was able to get our tax debt reduced to $36,000. End quote. The moral of that story is that you really need to be able to trust the person you choose to represent you with the IRS. With over 43 years of combined experience as a taxpayer, defense attorney, and CPA, I have successfully resolved hundreds of difficult IRS situations. One-on-one, personal attention is the hallmark of my representation, and my strategies are customized to your specific needs to completely resolve your IRS issues. So go to my website, New EnglandTaxrelief.com, and schedule a free telephone consultation or call me at 1-800-880-8388, where a live person will always answer and take your message 24-7. Welcome everyone to the Patty Gentile Show. And in studio with me, as always, is my producer, John Ayanuzy. And John, action-packed again today. Got a lot of packed into this show. I'm very excited about bringing it all on. But before we get to the, you know, the segments of the show, I wanted to do a couple of things. First, I want to give out our text phone number to the show. And this is where I'm going to have a few poll questions that I love, I love hearing from everybody. On that text number, 603-204-0104-603-2040104. And you can also send in your questions. Any questions you have on that, as well as responding to the poll questions that I'm going to put out. And uh any comments you may have, topics you might be interested in hearing about, definitely use that that text phone number for the show. Um I wanted to mention we have uh a passing on March 25th of the uh one of the lead singers in the um group Seals and Crofts, and his name was Dash Crofts. Jim Seals passed away in June of 2022. Dash passed away just recently, March 25th. They formed Seals and Crofts in 1969, and all throughout the 70s, I they were one of my favorite uh groups to listen to. So I just wanted to mention that about uh Dash Dash is passing, and now you know Seals and Crofts, uh we have now officially ended their era. Uh other notable dates though is right off the bat, we're in the month of April, and it's medical cannabis education month, and the first person that came to mind when I was looking at this was Frankie Boyer. Frankie has the cannabis A to Z talk show. So I text Frankie and I let her know I wanted to give a shout out because the month of April is medical cannabis education month. Another uh notable for the month of April is stress awareness.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Stress awareness month is those two could could be uh intertwined.

SPEAKER_06 4:31

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

You know, one could alleviate the other, theoretically.

SPEAKER_06 4:35

Oh, absolutely. And of course, what came to mind for me is how apropos it's stress awareness month because of April 15th coming up, but I'm definitely going to discuss in my last segment today uh tips as we're coming down to the wire of April 15th, and what I'm doing now with with clients that I am crunching numbers in order to properly file for extension. They're their extension, it's extension of time to file the forms, but not an extension of time to pay the tax.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

So since we're here, yeah, and I'm always conscious of time, I want to get this in. Yeah, as we've mentioned, we've have a nice growing uh list of people who are streaming the show on Facebook, yes, using that as a way to access the archives, which we appreciate. I also see a big bump up in web browsing, which we like as well. I'm a browser myself, right? Um, but the question that was asked, and this is another one that boy, it's a good thing you're here because I probably would not be able to give them the right answer. When it comes to mileage and keeping track of mileage, for instance, if someone is in a sales position, what is admissible, what is not? We know that going to the office is not, but from the office to a sales call.

SPEAKER_06 6:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

So you know, I like to be a- And by the way, this is Billy Kay.

SPEAKER_06 6:11

Oh, hi Billy. I I'm so glad to hear that question. I'll tell you why, because a lot of taxpayers don't even track their business mileage. And here's the tax professional preparing their return, or they get to they prepare their own return, the taxpayer, and they want that deduction for the business use of their vehicle. The IRS says that you have to have a mileage log book. You can get an app for those or an actual go-to staples, and there's auto mileage books that you can actually throw in your glove compartment, and every day you get in the vehicle, you put down what's on your odometer, and at the end of the day, you put what's on the odometer, and in between, what you do is log in the how you used your mileage. And you mentioned uh John mentioned here about commuting. If you're commuting from your home to your office and back to your home, you just separate commuting miles, you separate personal miles, and you should be able to uh come up with what your business mileage is. And so if you're going from your office and you're a salesperson or or somebody even like a CPA going to a client's office, uh from your office to there and back to your office or back to your home, is business mileage.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Now, what about and and Billy asked, the price of gas has increased. Has the deduction or has the reimbursement been adjusted to reflect that?

SPEAKER_06 8:10

Not yet, Billy. It's a little too soon for that, but you're definitely um looking at, I'm assuming you're looking at what the standard mileage rate is right now for 2025, and now we're into 2026, and that did increase for 2026. But we may, because it's happened in the past when we've had that spike in gas uh prices, that the IRS has come out and increased the standard mileage rate during a tax year, and we may see that. So keep your eye out on it and go to the IRS.gov for that. Uh, but thank you. Great questions, and you're being very um astute about that, making sure you're crossing your T's and dotting your I's because I know on audits, one of the first things the IRS is asking if you have uh vehicle deduction is they want that log. So good idea. I wanted to mention here too, John, before we have to go into the break. I have these poll questions around peanut butter and jelly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Because lived off the stuff.

SPEAKER_06 9:22

April 2nd.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

I'm a product of it.

SPEAKER_06 9:26

Is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. I love peanut butter. I literally need to keep it out of the house because I just love it. I can just eat it by the spoonful.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Which is just, Patty, I'm sorry to get like this, which is why it's so mind-boggling that I hope you realize. Should I send my daughter to her school with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? It would be akin to sending her to the school with a weapon. They are nut-free, allergies to nuts. You have to prove that the butters that you're using with your jelly are not nut-based butters. Wow. It is incredibly frustrating because uh I I like I said, I grew up on this stuff.

SPEAKER_06 10:17

Oh my god. Well, one of my poll questions was going to be what is your favorite peanut butter? And whether it you like Giffy Natural, there you go. Oh, that's that's a good brand. Uh, whether it's uh smooth or chunky, and um I also want to get in because of this next poll question. April 2nd is also International Children's Book Day, and it's to inspire, you know, a love of reading and promote children's literature. But I grew up on the Dr. Seuss books, uh, and I'm an avid reader. I was as a child, uh, I will always be an avid reader. So my next poll question is also what was your favorite children's book? Even if you're currently reading it to your child now, maybe it's become a favorite for you. So here's the phone number to text your responses to the poll 603-204-0104. And come on back after the break because I'm going to be discussing uh our taxpayers' bill of rights and talk to you about the taxpayers uh advocate service, the IRS taxpayer advocate service. So come on back. And John gave me a heads up that we needed to welcome our new subscribers to the show. So here's our shout out to Brockton, Massachusetts, Peoria, Arizona, and a town or city I've never heard of, but it's Saxey, Texas. And we looked it up and it's in a suburb, a Dallas suburb. It's a suburb of Dallas. So welcome. Thank you so much. Uh, we're really enjoying how our listenership is growing from wherever you listen from, whatever platform, whatever way you listen from. That actually reminds me that I wanted to make a mention also to the IRS put out on March 31st their um data on the Trump accounts uh and the pilot program elections that are right now solely based on how many filers of the form 4547, which is the Trump account elections that have been submitted with individual tax returns to the IRS to date. And the statistic is that four million children have been signed up for Trump accounts, with one million of those are claiming the $1,000 pilot program contribution. I find that very exciting. I I loved that I was able to prepare one of these forms for one of my clients, a form 4547. And here's the tip here. Uh the an order for the Trump Accounts Pilot program that offers a $1,000 federal seed contribution for children born between January 1st of 2025 and December 31st of 2028, who are you United States citizens with a valid Social Security number. The key on this form to take advantage of that, which is what I was able to do for my client because their son was born in January of 2025, is to make sure that you check the box on the form to stake your claim for the $1,000 contribution. And I want to put that out there because we're approaching April 15th. Um things can be getting rushed here, whether you're preparing your own return or you have a tax professional preparing their return, your return, excuse me, as well. And that's why at the end of the day here, when in my last segment, I'm going to discuss in these last minutes certain ways to make sure you're properly crunching the numbers to file an extension of time uh to file the tax returns, but it's not an extension of time to pay, so you want to crunch the numbers. And these are the times that mistakes can be made. And so I want to cover that at the end of uh our our show today. But right now, I also want to cover that we have a taxpayer bill of rights, and we have 10 taxpayer bill of rights where you can see these are on the IRS's website, irs.gov. They go into great detail also on the taxpayer advocate service website. Let me give you that. You can visit that taxpayeradvocate.gov. And what is the taxpayer advocate service? It's as they like to call themselves, the voice, your voice, your voice at the IRS, because they're an independent organization within the IRS. They're the taxpayer advocate service is there to ensure that every taxpayer is treated fairly and that you know and understand your rights. And they can offer you free help if you have a tax problem that you haven't been able to resolve with the IRS, and so I'll I'll go over that type of taxpayer bill of rights specifically that would help you know what your right is to try and resolve with the IRS. However, if you're going through all the proper administrative channels to try and resolve a matter with the IRS and it's not working, this is where the taxpayer advocate service comes in. And, you know, if you qualify, you'll be assigned to one advocate who'll do everything possible to resolve your problem. And I've worked with the taxpayer advocates uh office uh for years. Uh we get to a point, maybe in some situation, where it's better that the taxpayer is better served by having a taxpayer advocate case assigned. They uh the employees there help taxpayers who are also experiencing economic difficulties, such as not being able to provide necessities like housing, transportation, or food. They help uh taxpayers who are seeking help and resolving problems with the IRS, like I just mentioned, and taxpayers who believe an IRS system or procedure is not working as it should. And this is where I want to bring out in the taxpayer bill of rights that you have the right, I'm going to name each one of these. You have the right to be informed, the right to quality service, the right to pay no more than the correct amount of tax. Let me repeat that the right to pay no more than the correct amount of tax, the right to challenge the IRS's position and be heard, the right to appeal an IRS decision in an independent form, the right to finality, the right to privacy, the right to confidentiality, the right to retain representation, the right to a fair and just tax system. And this is where, you know, taxpayers have the right to expect the tax system to consider facts and circumstances that might affect their underlying liabilities or their ability to pay or the ability to provide them with information timely. And so this is where you know taxpayers have the right to receive assistance from the taxpayer advocate service if they are experiencing financial difficulty or if the IRS has not resolved their tax issues properly and timely through its normal channels. So I want everybody to be aware of that as we are uh rounding down April 15th, and maybe these matters you still have at hand or after April 15th. In our next segment, our guest today is Larry Heinkel. He is a tax and bankruptcy attorney, and I'm going to switch that around. I think he likes to say bankruptcy and tax attorney. And he now has a new book. We're going to discuss, he's just launched his book, How to Eliminate Tax Debt with Bankruptcy. And I want to mention that we had Larry on in an episode uh in October of 2025. And if you are needing to download any episodes, you can go to my website, New England Taxrelief.com, and look on my podcast page, and you can look for the we had episode four when Larry discussed discharging uh taxes and bankruptcy, and now he's launched this book, as well as I did a very in-depth uh segment on the Trump accounts, and that was episode 19. It was the February 7th show of this year, and you can also go to my podcast to download these shows at Fighting the Good Fight with Patricia Gentile wherever you download your podcast. So come on back and we'll have Larry Heinkel talk about his new book. Welcome back everyone from the break. And as I mentioned, we have here today as our guest, bankruptcy and tax attorney Larry Heinkel. Larry, I just want to say congratulations on the launch of your book, How to Eliminate Tax Debt with Bankruptcy. So welcome, Larry. Thank you. Larry, if if you wouldn't mind, could you tell us uh, you know, maybe your story around uh, you know, what changed the way you practice tax law, what had you write the book?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Sure. Well, you know, I I was a tax lawyer my whole career fighting the IRS, uh, not a bankruptcy attorney. But many years ago, I remember now, the Florida Bar asked me if I was interested in giving a presentation on what happens to taxes and bankruptcy. And I was a young lawyer anxious to get on the speaking circuit, you know. All right, and I said, sure, I'd be glad to. And I had no idea, I had zero idea, and I spent at least a couple hundred hours studying bankruptcy law and the tax law to figure it out, and then I wrote my outline, so it really was you know, agreeing to talk like an expert on something that I knew nothing about. So I taught myself, and it's frankly been a goal model, um, because it's an area uh bankruptcy lawyers generally speaking don't know anything about tax, tax lawyers don't know anything about bankruptcy, and in order to discharge taxes and bankruptcy, the law looks at both of them together, right? So you've got to look at both codes, as you know, bankruptcy is Title XI and the IRS is Title 26, and you gotta put them together, so it's very difficult, and um so I have made a uh very good extra living off of advising not only my clients but other bankruptcy attorneys around the country to don't know how to do it, uh how to figure out when the taxes are dischargeable, and if they're not dischargeable today, how long do they have to wait? Right. I've been doing this for 43 years, I'm slowing down, and I really wanted to write something because there is nothing like it out there on for the public. If the public only knew how bankruptcy can wipe out taxes, because the general consensus in the public is that you can't wipe out taxes in bankruptcy. That's what everybody thinks, and the IRS has no interest in telling you otherwise. So if the taxes qualify, or when they qualify, what's nice about it is you can get rid of all your federal income taxes, usually the state income taxes, as well as credit cards, medical bills, judgments, everything. So usually when the tax problem resolution arena, you normally the resolution is either a settlement, an offering compromise, or a payment plan. So if you do a settlement, it's great, but it only handles the IRS. Most people with a big tax problem also owe state taxes, not us in Florida, because you know we don't have an income tax, but they've got income, state income taxes, credit card debts, they're usually a bit of a financial mess, more than just the IRS. So, what's nice about bankruptcy is it can take care of everything, right? And it's probably cheaper than doing an offer and compromise, and it's more assured if you qualify, that's it. Whereas, as you know, with an offer and compromise, you may fit, but they're gonna argue with it, they're gonna argue over expenses or the value of a car or whatever, right? Arguing with the bankruptcy, you know. Now, bankruptcy is not for everybody, and I will tell you another thing, everybody, almost everybody says, Well, it's gonna ruin my credit. You've got bad credit now, you know. If you owe 200,000 to the IRS and you've got 50,000 in credit card debt and all this kind of stuff, you think you can go get a car loan or a bank loan now? Whereas after bankruptcy, if you wiped out the IRS and wiped out your credit, wiped out all your creditors, yes, you filed bankruptcy, but you don't owe anybody anything. You're making good money, and you can't file bankruptcy again for eight years. You're a better credit risk. And in all the clients that I had, because we used to do a lot of bankruptcy work, um, I have never had anybody come to me and say they regret it that it was a mistake. Never. Moses was this guy that I uh filed bankruptcy for to get rid of his taxes a long time ago, and I was going near Disney, technically on Disney World's property. There's a very big wealthy development there, and I had a client, and he was going, he owned a telecommunications company in Iraq. It's probably gone now, um, or Iran, I forget which one, but he had an international tax audit. So I came out to his house. Well, he had to call down to the guard gate and give him my name for the guard to let me in. Right. When I get there, Moses was the guard and he recognized my name. And he walked up, and either thought it was my long-lost brother, and how glad he was to see me. And he went on and on about that was the best thing he ever did. And he bought a new car three months later, and and you know that really, yeah, we are in business to make money and have a living, there's no doubt about it. But when your clients 20 years later remember you and are appreciative, that's worth a lot. That's worth a lot.

SPEAKER_06 28:28

It is it it so it means everything when you hear that you've helped somebody. We we only have a few minutes left of the segment, but is there anything that you want to teach in a couple of minutes? And I definitely want you to let people know about what you offer in a transcript analysis, what you can do for them about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Well, I first want to say I did not write this with the goal of getting more business. If the public only knew that this was an option, they would go wild with it because they don't know that they don't know they can do this. It is by far, I believe, the most difficult area of bankruptcy law. I had tried to write it as simply and plainly as possible, not quoting a lot of statutes, not quoting a lot of cases, just follow this step by step. But understand, it is a very complicated area of law. We are here, they can email me, Larry Heinkel at lawyer, um Heinkel's H-E-I-N-K-E-L. They can go to the website which is tax be gone. Now there's hyphens, it's tax hyphen, the letter B hyphen gone.com. And you in order to do this, you have to get transcripts from the IRS because the IRS tells you like when you filed, was there an audit, it gives you all this information. Did you file an extension for 2015? Who remembers? The IRS remembers. So you can go to the get the transcripts and tell you that. If you have a hard time, you can hire us for a very nominal fee. We'll get the transcripts for you. For a very nominal fee, we'll do the whole thing if you want. The fee ranges from say around $1,250 to $5,000, depending on how many years you owe and how much you owe.

SPEAKER_06 30:31

How can they get your book?

SPEAKER_01 30:33

On the Tax Begone website, and it's B, the letter B, not B E. Tax Bone website, it's uh 1995, and um and they can download it right away. It's about 90 pages, but it takes goes step by step by step, and there's some examples or some checklists. Um and again, I wrote it so that people could do it themselves. Number two, so that at least they know that this option exists, because so many people are told and believe that you can't get rid of taxes in bankruptcy, and you can. And if you go into bankruptcy for other reasons without gearing it to the IRS, well, if you get rid of your credit card and medical bills, but now you steal all the IRS, I maintain you're not really that much better off. You know, you gotta get everything in a clean, clean start. And bankruptcy is to give the honest debtor a fresh start because you're no good to your family, to yourself, to society if you're burdened by a lot of debt and get depressed and and and and there's no way out. There is a way out. It doesn't mean you're a failure, it means something happened. You know, it's usually a divorce, a job loss. You know, people get laid off and and don't have you know the TSA workers that aren't getting paid. I mean, right, bad things happen to good people for no reason, and there's a way out. And so this book is not about bankruptcy. This book is about how to get rid of taxes and bankruptcy. So it's very important, right?

SPEAKER_06 32:07

Larry, thank you so much. All the best on your book and helping people out there with your book and with your transcript analysis. Just thank you so much for coming in.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

You're welcome. Thank you for having me, and and uh look forward to seeing you again at our next conference.

SPEAKER_06 32:54

That was so informative uh from Larry discussing really another option to resolve your tax matters and have a fresh start in life. I can't thank him enough. Uh I really enjoy his book. It's actually a in my professional uh reference library, to be honest with you. We are now, this is my coaching corner where I discuss tips and strategies uh in order to handle tax matters. And at this point, the tax matter at hand is we're under two weeks out from April 15th deadline. So what I'm doing right now with a lot of my clients who are have sent me their information in you know, say the past week, I'm not going to be able to work with that and get their returns filed by April 15th. And so, and there are some pieces of information from other clients that they're still waiting for. And so given those limits right there, I'm going to be placing these particular clients on extension. And what that means is for individuals, the IRS has a form 4868, which is an application for an extension of time to file the returns. And if you have a state income tax that you have to file, they have their own extension form, and you want to look that up on the state uh department of revenue's website to know what that number is. How am I making sure that my clients, if they were going to owe with a return that they file on April 15th, what would they owe? A reasonable estimate, uh more on the conservative side, so that they don't get hit with the failure to file penalty. Because once again, it's an extension of time to file the returns, but not an extension of time to pay the tax. So you have to do your best estimate, best numbers crunching, and make sure that maybe your client or maybe yourself, if you're preparing your own returns and you're going to place yourself on extension, uh pays in enough or has already paid in enough tax so that you can file that extension. That failure to file penalty, once you file the return, you get an automatic six-month extension of time to October 15th to file that return. And once you file that return within that six-month period, if you have a balance owed with that return, there's certain uh requirements that if the balance is over a certain uh amount, a certain percentage of the total tax you ended up calculating, you can get hit with 5% a month up to a maximum of 25% penalty, failure to file penalty calculated on that balance out of an extended return. So this is very important to make sure either your clients, if you're a tax professional, or yourself, if you're self-preparing your return, make sure that you take this time and do this numbers crunching. So, what I am doing, for example, I have uh a client who is self-employed, has a self-employed business. Well, I've gotten from his uh a bookkeeper uh a profit and loss statement so that I can see a bottom line whether there's net income or net loss on that business. Not all the transactions for the year have been uh properly classified or the the profit and loss statement needs more uh adjustments and cleaning up. So we're trying to estimate what effect that could be on on that bottom line. And then I ask for from this client other personal information. Did you take a distribution from your uh IRA? Did you take a did you sell stock during the year and have capital gain? And did you pay estimated tax payments during the year? And so I take that all into consideration. I throw it in my professional tax software, and we get an idea that if uh they were to file their tax return on April 15th, would they owe with the return? And that's what you want to pay in with the extension. Another example is uh a client who has rental properties, but that client also lost their job uh at the beginning of 2025, so they have a W-2, and so some taxes got paid in through the W-2. But a couple other things have happened. This this client actually was able to get what you call subcontract work during the year while he's trying to look for a full-time job with an employer, so he has a Form 1099 for non-employee compensation. And this client's personal uh filing status is actually married filing joint, however, him and his spouse have officially become divorced during 2026, but as of December 31st of 2025, your filing status, what is your legal filing status? You can still file a married filing joint return, or you can choose to do married filing separate. So there's a couple of tips here about, you know, what do I do with my clients? What kind of information I'm gathering, what kind of numbers am I crunching to make sure that whatever, if they do oh with the extensions, there they pay that in with the extension form and get a proper valid extension of time to file the returns, complete and accurate, as well as avoid that uh and prevent that failure to file penalty. So if you have any questions, please go to New England Taxrelief.com. Actually schedule. I have right there on my website. You can schedule for a free telephone consultation with me. You can call, I have a 1-800 number, 880-8388, where someone answers 247, a live person uh in a business here in the United States, as well as we have our uh text number to the show six oh three two oh four oh one oh four. Until next weekend, have a great week.