About our company

My name is John Rice and I am the owner and manager of Straightline Tax Resolutions LLC.  I represent people before the Internal Revenue Service in tax delinquency cases (balances, unfiled returns, payroll tax issues, etc.).  I retired from the IRS in December 2019 after 32 years working in virtually every area of IRS tax collection.  My wife Cheryl works with me and she also retired from the IRS in December 2019, after more than 30 years working in IRS Examination.   Between the two of us, there is almost no collection or examination issue we haven’t seen.  We are enrolled to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, and we want to use our combined 60+ years of experience to help you resolve your tax problems quickly and at the lowest cost to you.

I started with the IRS in 1987 after a 4-year stint in the United States Air Force and after graduating from The Ohio State University.  I started as a revenue officer and worked my way through the collection organization and collection leadership, serving my last 7 years as the Central Area Senior Technical Analyst, providing guidance to collection personnel in 10 states, including Ohio.  Cheryl has many years of experience as an auditor, a technical services advisor, and an innocent spouse subject matter expert.  From 2022-2024, the IRS hired me as a contractor to teach newly hired employees how to be revenue officers.

The greatest change I witnessed during my 30+ years of service is the role of tax representation in collection cases, and this change was not for the better.  In the 1980s and 1990s, tax representation was mostly local and was performed by practitioners who interacted and worked with local IRS personnel on a regular basis.  The representation was vigorous and competent, and both sides knew the rules of the road and played by them to accomplish a single goal:  resolution of the taxpayer’s problems quickly and efficiently, with an outcome that satisfied both the taxpayer and the government.  Sadly, the current state of tax representation does not work that way.

Many of the firms that now offer tax representation are national and driven by profit over service.  I honestly am disgusted by some of what I see in the industry, with companies that take taxpayers for a ride promising things they can’t deliver (settle for “pennies on the dollar”) and instead take actions on cases that have no chance of succeeding or don’t put the case on a straight path to resolution. 

This is where the idea of straightline tax resolution came from.  The truth that many of these firms don’t understand, or do understand but won’t communicate, is this:  Resolution of your tax case is based almost entirely on your personal and financial circumstances and has nothing to do with any actions taken by your representative.  It is a very simple matter to figure out what collection alternatives are available to a taxpayer and then map a course toward getting the best deal possible for the client, without exploring expensive and unproductive alternatives.  So why don’t these firms do this?  In fairness, some do, but many do not, perhaps because they don’t understand the collection process or because they value high customer billings over getting the problems resolved “quickly and at the lowest cost” to the client. 

So why am I any different, you might fairly ask.  Here are a few things that set me apart from the national tax firms:

I know more about IRS Collection than they do.   It’s not bragging, just a fact.  I know every procedure, system and process that the IRS uses.  I can look at the facts and circumstances of nearly any case and tell you exactly what needs to be done to bring it to resolution.  I was a revenue officer, so I know all the nuts and bolts of collection.  I was a manager, so I know everything that is needed to get a case approved.  I was an analyst, so I know all the legal, procedural and policy issues involved in collection case work.  It’s about experience, and I have it. 

I care that you get the best collection alternative available.  The IRS is a very big and scary agency, with the means to devastate the lives of people in its path.  I once heard the IRS described as an elephant:  very big, slow, and easy to outrun, but with a long memory and the ability squash you when it finally catches up with you.  During my 32 years on the job I saw too many people get squashed because they couldn’t get the help they needed to get right with the service.  I aim to help as many of these people as I can.

My fees are reasonable. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most tax resolution companies charge you a flat fee regardless of how much work is required to resolve your tax problem. I’ve seen firms charge several thousand dollars for a case that required only 1 or 2 hours work. Or worse, there are companies that promise you they will get you an offer in compromise before they have even looked at your finances, and charge exorbitant fees to complete offer in compromise applications that have zero chance of being successful. And then just shrug their shoulders when your offer is rejected as ask you to pay more money. I don’t operate that way. I’m only doing this to stay active in the business. Once I have evaluated your situation, I will quote you a reasonable fee based on the amount of work it will require to resolve your case. And I always work your case to resolution.