How the IRS Has Been Breaking the Law for Nearly Two Decades!

Date: 3/31/2026

By: Stephen Zogal, MST, EA

In 1998, Congress enacted Internal Revenue Code § 6304 to protect taxpayers from abusive, unfair, and improper collection practices. The statute was meant to place real limits on the IRS when dealing with taxpayers, especially when those taxpayers have already appointed an authorized representative. Yet for years, the IRS has continued using collection procedures that undermine the very protections Congress intended to guarantee.

At the center of the problem is the IRS’s practice of sending critical collection notices, including the CP504 Notice of Intent to Levy, directly to taxpayers even when the agency already has a valid power of attorney on file. A represented taxpayer should be able to rely on his or her authorized representative to receive, review, and respond to important communications. In practice, however, the IRS often proceeds in a way that leaves the representative out of the process at the very moment when action is most important.

That is not a harmless technicality. It can cost taxpayers some of their most important legal protections. If the representative does not timely respond because the notice was not properly copied or handled, the taxpayer may lose the opportunity to preserve rights connected to a Collection Due Process hearing, including the ability to seek review in the United States Tax Court. Instead, the taxpayer may be pushed into a lesser administrative alternative that lacks the same safeguards, appeal rights, and judicial review.

This is why the issue is bigger than paperwork. It is a due process problem with intentional disregard to the taxpayers rights!

When Congress passed § 6304, the purpose was to stop overreaching collection conduct. A law designed to restrict direct IRS contact and protect represented taxpayers should not be defeated by internal policies that let the agency bypass the representative and then argue that the taxpayer’s rights have expired. What is happening instead is that the IRS is elevating administrative form over fairness, while represented taxpayers lose meaningful rights through no informed choice of their own.

The unfairness is obvious. A taxpayer may believe that his representative is monitoring the case. The representative may assume that the IRS will provide proper duplicate notice. But when the IRS sends a deadline-driven notice only to the taxpayer, or fails to ensure effective notice to both parties, the result can be the silent forfeiture of statutory protections. Rights to a true Collection Due Process hearing, rights to an independent appeals process, and rights to Tax Court review can all disappear because of the government’s own notice procedure.

That is hard to square with either the spirit or the text of § 6304. Congress did not pass taxpayer protection laws so the IRS could work around them through internal policy distinctions. If the agency has actual notice that a taxpayer is represented, it should not be free to communicate in a manner that effectively cuts the representative out of the process while still holding the taxpayer strictly responsible for missed deadlines. No citizen should lose statutory due process protections merely because the IRS chose a method of notice that was not reasonably calculated to protect the taxpayer’s existing representative relationship.

There is also evidence from actual practice that taxpayers have lost the right to a Collection Due Process hearing because of what can only be described as an IRS methodology designed to circumvent the protections of Title 26 § 6304 through outdated internal policies. Whether the agency describes it that way or not, the broader point remains the same: a taxpayer protection statute means very little if the government can nullify it through procedure.

The solution is straightforward. The law should require mandatory duplicate notice to authorized representatives whenever a valid power of attorney is on file. It should prevent forfeiture of Collection Due Process rights unless both the taxpayer and representative receive proper notice. Deadlines should be extended or reinstated where representation was ignored or mishandled. Tax Court review rights should be preserved whenever defective notice contributed to the loss of a timely hearing request.

These reforms would not weaken tax enforcement. They would strengthen the legitimacy of tax administration. The IRS has every right to collect taxes lawfully owed, but it does not have the right to do so by using procedures that strip represented taxpayers of the protections Congress enacted. Due process should not depend on whether the government chose to copy the right person.

If § 6304 is to mean anything, Congress must act. A represented taxpayer should not lose fundamental hearing rights and judicial review rights because the IRS failed to respect a valid power of attorney. When an agency ignores the safeguards written into law, it is not merely making an administrative mistake. It is violating the law Congress passed to protect the public.

As the saying goes - "No Taxation without Representation" should be used again and there should be a full investigation of IRS Collection procedures and congressional hearings as to why this was allowed to happen, to correct what is broken. The IRS is not above the law and WE - The american people should hold them accountable.