We work out what the IRS would realistically accept to settle your tax debt, show you exactly how we got there, and fill in the official forms for you to check, sign, and post yourself.
That is the whole of it. We are document preparation software. We are not a law firm, not enrolled agents, and not CPAs; we do not advise you on your particular situation; and we never contact the IRS on your behalf.
Yes. The forms are free from the IRS, the allowances they use are published, and the calculation is arithmetic. Nothing here is secret.
What you are paying for is not access. It is the allowances being looked up for your county and household, the arithmetic being done the way the IRS worksheet does it, and fifteen pages coming out filled in and consistent with each other. Most people find that part hard to get right on their own, and small mistakes are what get offers sent back.
Go in knowing that most offers are not accepted. In the 2025 fiscal year, taxpayers proposed 38,797 offers and the IRS accepted 5,464: roughly one for every 7 put in.
Two things that figure does not say, because the IRS does not publish them. It is not a pass rate for one group of people, because the offers proposed in a year and the offers decided in it are different piles. And it is not the failure rate of doing it yourself: there is no published split between offers prepared by taxpayers and offers prepared by professionals, so anybody quoting you one has made it up.
What we can tell you is what the money looks like. We charge $99 per tax year. The IRS charges its $205 application fee whether you use us, use a professional, or do it alone. What a professional charges is not published anywhere and varies enormously, so we will not put a number on it. Ask for a fixed fee in writing before you engage anyone, and be wary of anyone charging a percentage of what you save.
If money is tight, Low Income Taxpayer Clinics represent people before the IRS for free or for a small fee, generally for households at or below 250% of the federal poverty level. You are more than welcome to check with one.
No. Representation before the IRS is for attorneys, CPAs and enrolled agents, and we are none of those. We do not negotiate, we do not call them, and we do not receive their letters. The forms we prepare are yours: you sign them and you send them in your own name.
Not really, and this surprises people. The IRS calculates what it believes it can collect from you and will not knowingly accept less. The way it calculates that is published, as a worksheet and a set of living allowances.
So there is no haggling to be done and nobody to be persuaded. Offering less than the number does not get you a discount; it gets your offer rejected. What is worth attention is whether the figures going in are right.
Two parts, added together:
Your estimate shows every line of this, and the figure at the bottom is the one that goes on your forms.
Usually one of three things:
The estimate breaks all of this down. If a figure looks wrong, it is usually an answer worth correcting rather than a calculation worth arguing with.
We cannot promise that, and you should be wary of anyone who does. We compute the figure from the IRS’s own published method, which is the best available guide to what they will accept. But they verify everything you tell them, they may value an asset differently, and acceptance is their decision and not ours. An estimate is an estimate.
Then an Offer in Compromise is the wrong thing for you and we will not sell you one. An offer settles a debt for less than the full amount; one at or above your balance would cost you the $205 IRS fee to be told to pay what you already owe.
We refuse it at the estimate, at checkout, and again inside the software that builds the forms. Where this happens we say so and point you at what might actually fit.
$99 per tax year. Once, not monthly. No subscription, no percentage of what you save, and no separate charge if your business also owes tax. That needs extra forms, and they are included. The estimate is free and does not ask for a card or a Social Security number.
Two payments, and neither goes to us. An application fee of $205 with each offer, and a first payment towards the offer itself, sent with the application:
We show you both figures before you pay us anything.
Yes, if your household income is under the IRS’s low income threshold for your family size and state. It waives both the $205 fee and the payment due with the application. We apply the test automatically from what you tell us and show you the threshold we used. It is written for individuals and sole proprietors, so it does not reach a company’s own offer. It waives the IRS’s charges, not ours: our $99 per tax year still applies.
No, and this is the most important thing on this page. What you send the IRS with an offer is not a deposit. The terms you sign say so:
“I voluntarily submit the payments made on this offer and understand that they will not be returned even if I withdraw the offer or the IRS rejects or returns the offer.”
“The IRS will also keep my application fee unless the offer is not accepted for processing.”
The money is applied to your tax debt rather than lost outright, so it is not wasted. But it is gone from your pocket, and you cannot get it back by changing your mind. This is why we refuse to sell forms for an offer that cannot succeed.
Our own $99 is a separate matter. If we have taken your money and not given you working forms, tell us.
File them first. An offer sent while a required return is outstanding does not get considered, and the IRS is specific about what happens:
“If it is determined you have not filed all tax returns you are legally required to file, the IRS will apply any initial payment you sent with your offer to your tax debt and return only your offer and application fee to you.”
You cannot appeal that decision. If you tell us a year is unfiled, we put it at the top of your checklist.
We do not know, and we will not guess at a number you might plan around. What we can tell you is the limit written into the terms you sign:
“my offer will be accepted, by law, unless the IRS notifies me otherwise, in writing, within 24 months of the date my offer was received by our IRS centralized offer in compromise unit”
That is an outer limit, not a typical wait. If you chose to pay monthly, those payments continue the whole time, and missing one gets the offer returned with no right of appeal.
Not quite. Acceptance comes with five years of strings attached:
“If you fail to timely file and timely pay any tax obligations that become due within the five years after your offer acceptance we may default your offer.”
A defaulted offer puts the original debt back, less what you paid. There is also this, which catches people the following spring:
“The IRS will keep any refund, including interest, that I might be due for tax assessed before the date the IRS accepts my offer.”
On our servers, not in your browser. Every answer you give is saved to our database as you go. Your browser keeps only a small cookie that points at them. That is what lets you stop halfway and pick up again later, or start on a laptop and finish on your phone.
It also means clearing your browser does not delete them. It only loses the pointer. To remove them from our servers, use Delete my answers. Until you buy forms, that deletes everything we hold for you in one step, including your email address if you saved your progress with one. Once you have bought forms, your answers are tied to your purchase and the forms you may want to download again, so write to us and a person will deal with it.
We do not. The IRS does, on the forms we prepare for you, and it returns an offer that arrives without one. The estimate never asks for it: if you are here to find out where you stand, you can get the whole way to a rough number without telling us who you are. When you get to your forms, you can type it in and we will print it for you, or tell us you would rather write it on the forms by hand, and we will leave the boxes blank and show you where it goes.
We use it to work out your offer and fill in your forms. We do not sell your information. If a professional referred you, they see only counts: how many people they sent and how far along those people are. Never your name, your balance, or your figures.
Yes. Your answers are saved to our servers as you go. “Save and finish later” at the top of any screen emails you a link back to them, which works on a different device too: handy if you started on a laptop and want to finish on your phone. No password to remember.
Send it to us. We read everything. What we cannot do is answer a question about your particular situation. That is advice, and giving it is exactly the line we do not cross. For that you want an enrolled agent, a CPA, or a tax attorney.
Figures on this page are read from the same IRS documents your forms are filled from, not typed in by hand, so this page changes when the IRS changes them. Quotations are the IRS’s own words.