What do Baseball and an IRS Offer in Compromise Have in Common?

 

I’ve spent some time researching Offers in Compromise lately, especially the provision providing for an OIC under the “Doubt as to Collectability with Special Circumstances” (DATC-SC) provision. As I’ve researched OICs in general and the DATC exceptions specifically, I’ve began to see some parallels with baseball. Stay with me for second.

First, and on a purely unscientific basis, my bet is that many tax pros are also baseball fans. Further, I sense a close affiliation with the new baseball metrics and the willingness to wade into the tax code on  regular basis. For those non-baseball fans, the Michael Lewis book and the movie Moneyball demonstrates the value of a baseball grinder versus that of high money free agent that a team will overpay for years and years.  Its about looking at the numbers and not what your eyes tell you. Quoting the Billy Beane, the subject of the book and movie, “We are card counters at the blackjack table, and we’re going to turn the odds on the casino”. Tax pros do the same thing with IRS acting as the casino.

Baseball has a term for player who works and works at their craft – the term is “grinder.” Day in and day out that put in the work to get better. Casual fans do not see it and they normally attribute success as an overnight phenomenon. Think of the Beatles, Many think that theirs was an overnight success. The public failed to see the enormous investment of time, practice and performance that they put into their craft way before they hit the Ed Sullivan show.

Those of us who specialize in tax controversy and tax relief services are grinders too. We get information, manipulate it, dress it up or down, mark it up and then ask for more from our clients. We do this in the expectation that we are presenting a case worthy of acceptance by the IRS. We ask our clients to grind too. Sometimes its greeted with applause, sometimes with groans. The reality is we must put in the time if we expect to have any success for our clients.

You may heard fans yell at a Little League game – “a walk is as good as a hit!”. True. Not as spectacular as a home run, and won’t get you paid as much in today’s game, but it is still true. Great hitting grinders learn to take pitches to get to the one they want, their best pitch to hit. It takes patience and persistence – all qualities of grinding.

Same thing happens when dealing with the IRS. There are so many levels of agents, officers, settlement officers, appeals officers – we as tax professionals are trying to get our clients story for the right decision maker. The one that sees our clients’ situation the same as we do. And that’s what this is about – getting the IRS to see things as we do.

All it takes is a little baseball style grinding.

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