Blogging for tax services requires somewhat of a scaremongering mindset. When it comes to paying our taxes, most of us do so more out of fear of the IRS than patriotism. Coupled with the scaremongering is the absolute need to spy on the enemy’s playbook, which is the over 10,000 pages of the tax code from Hell.
The IRS, who wrote the code to begin with, administers, adjudicates and has powers of enforcement, which makes it a collection agency on steroids. What can they do to you if you don’t pay up? Everything. They can take your money and your property, and what they can’t confiscate outright, they can lean on with a lien.
A lien is a big brown smudge on the title to your home or other real property. Try to dispose of the property or get a loan or more credit, and the lien is the equivalent of an IRS auditor yelling, “Not so fast!”
Then there’s the other L-word, which is the levy. That’s where the IRS can confiscate your bank accounts, garnish your wages, divert your accounts receivable if you own a business and even go after the cash value of your life insurance policy for the money you owe in back taxes. Those back taxes also grow in size because of interest and penalties.
See what I mean about scaremongering? In the previous explanation about liens and levies, I barely scratched the surface of what powers the IRS has to collect taxes for the voracious beast the federal government has become.
So the key to blogging successfully for tax services is taking the dry, structured language of the IRS procedures manual and writing about it in a way to get the attention of tax procrastinators. It is totally reality based, because when you owe the IRS, you can hide, but you can’t run forever.
The tax service is in business to help people get their lives back in order and settling up with the IRS. Contrary to popular opinion, the people at the IRS are approachable and are willing to compromise and work out a time payment or even partial forgiveness of the debt. They realize – and the tax code is written accordingly – that crippling a tax payer financially doesn’t get money flowing in.
On the other hand, if there’s fraud involved, the IRS doesn’t hesitate to call in the heavy hitters of their Criminal Investigation Division. It’s like that old Far Side cartoon, where the shark says to the castaway floating on a raft: “Look, why don’t you just give up and let us eat you. Otherwise, there could be a feeding frenzy, and no one wants that.”
If you’re looking for bloggers who know about tax problems, solutions, and options, contact us. We know of one or two who used to work for the IRS. We don’t know if they are reporting their BlogMutt earnings as income, but this writing service operates on the honor system, just like the IRS – except they have auditors.
Editor’s Note: This blog is an example of the kind of writing you can get for your blog. The only thing that’s different is that it has the name of the writer. For your blog, you can say you wrote it. That’s fine with us. We’re happy mutts. Click here for more explanation of this series of posts.
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