The eight phases
- Intake facts — the client’s situation, objectives, and story captured as structured intake, labeled as narrative (not yet verified)
- IRS record review — transcripts pulled and parsed; balances, filings, and enforcement signals become the factual spine of the case
- Compliance posture — filing and payment compliance established, because it gates every resolution program
- Collection risk — enforcement urgency and statute posture assessed from the IRS record
- Financial analysis — income, expenses, and ability to pay built as the 433-style financial profile
- Resolution eligibility — program fit evaluated against the evidence, with options ordered and caution flags documented
- Implementation scope — the chosen path sequenced into scoped, agreed work
- Verification record — work performed, attested, and preserved as the closing deliverable
Truth has tiers
The methodology keeps sources of truth distinct instead of blending them: what the IRS record shows, what the client reports, and what the financial profile establishes are held separately — so when they disagree, the case surfaces the contradiction instead of averaging it. Recommendations cite the tier they stand on.
Every phase ends in an artifact
A phase is not complete because someone says so. Discovery closes with a deliverable. Strategy closes with a deliverable. The engagement closes with a Work Verification record. Steps along the way are attested — performed by a named operator, tied to the evidence behind them.
- Discovery Work Product — IRS posture, urgency, program fit — advisory-grade diagnosis your firm can bill for.
- Resolution Work Product — Option ordering, sequencing, and implementation roadmap tied to the same case record.
- Work Verification Record — Evidence of work performed — fee defense and retention when expectations shift.
The standard runs on a calendar, not on memory
Implementation is held to the same rigor as the analysis: each program seeds a dated work plan from its playbook, deadlines — including CSEDs and response windows projected from the parsed IRS ledger — land on the firm calendar, and stalled programs escalate to the manager view before the client feels the silence. See Running the practice in the docs for the full operations layer.
What we publish — and what we don’t
The phases above are the standard, and we publish them openly. The engines underneath — how transcripts are scored, how programs are ranked, how reports are assembled — are the product, and they stay in the product. Evaluate them the honest way: on a complete sample case, with the work product in hand.