You've got a letter in front of you and it uses one difficult phrase to cover several quite different charges. The figure can wait a few minutes. The name of the charge really can't.
The form number at the top and the period the letter covers are worth more than the total in bold. Together they tell you which charge you are looking at. Failing to file and failing to pay are two charges, not one. They carry different rates, and their clocks started on different days.
Information returns carry penalties of their own. They are counted per form rather than as a share of tax. That is why a small business with a pile of 1099s can meet a number that looks wildly out of step with anything it owes.
A letter that mixes two charges and prints one total is not doing you any favors. Splitting the rows usually changes what the sensible response is. Sometimes it changes the number too. Sometimes it just changes the order you deal with things in, which is still worth an hour.
No rate and no dollar figure gets printed on this page, because the arithmetic belongs to your letter and your year.
Naming the charge is an afternoon. Making sure a letter like it doesn't turn up again is a year of ordinary bookkeeping. A Tax CFO is the controller and CFO seat for an owner-run business with the tax work inside it, so the books, the return and the plan come from one desk and the October number is decided before the year ends.
Breadth is the letter, the books and the return kept by one person, so the reason the charge happened gets fixed rather than just explained. Height is looking far enough ahead that the filings land on their dates without anybody having to be heroic about it.
The letter itself is enough to start with. If you can add which returns are already in and which are still outstanding, the reading gets quicker, but nobody is going to hold the answer back for want of a perfect file.
Working out which charge a letter means, and keeping the books that stop the next one, is what happens here. A hearing, an appeal or any filing made on your behalf as your representative belongs with a firm that does that work, and no CPA license sits at this desk either, so signed reports on your statements go elsewhere as well. You'll hear both of those early rather than late. The longer drawing of the limit lives on the disclosures page.
The IRS page can be read from any city. The person who names the row beside it is in Dallas.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.