AIDS Project L.A.

‘Tax therapist’ helps those in crisis face IRS

Dealing with the Internal Revenue Service can be nerve-racking.

Trouble with the IRS

You can imagine or maybe have even experienced compounding these feelings by being afflicted with cancer or AIDS, or while trying to overcome a bout with alcoholism, drugs or some other personal crisis. The obstacles seem overwhelming, and the feelings of helplessness and panic tend to envelop those who deal with this on a daily basis.

But it does not have to be this way.

There is a “guiding light” in this storm of uncertainty. Dr. Joyce Rebhun is a crusader who regularly deals with individuals who find themselves in tax dilemmas.

Rebhun, whose efforts have been spotlighted in recent years by a host of media including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and Money magazine, has carved a niche for herself as a self-proclaimed “tax therapist” and has helped thousands of clients to confront their “fear of filing.”

“I get a certain satisfaction from helping others,” she says. “It constantly energizes me to see them return to the mainstream.”

A native of Pittsburgh, Rebhun has worn many hats in her lifetime. After amassing five degrees, including a J.D., M.B.A. and a doctorate of finance, she worked for the IRS for five years in the early 1970s as a tax fraud examiner, later going on to serve as a corporate tax attorney for several “Fortune 200″ companies.

In addition to being a licensed certified public accountant and tax attorney, Rebhun has also published articles on the tax process. In the mid 1980s, she incorporated to provide tax consultation in private practice, gradually becoming sensitized to the human aspect behind those filing tax returns.

A majority of the 7,000 clients she has served in her career are people in crisis, often dealing with foreclosure, bankruptcy, liens and garnishments. They may also be victims of personal trauma, running the gamut from cancer, rape, depression, child abuse, divorce or death of a spouse or child. Most recently, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts and those testing HIV-positive have sought solace from Dr. Joyce.

“The normal CPA, the normal attorney will not nurture you,” she says. “Often people in trouble need to be nurtured, at least to get the process started.”

She constantly reminds her clients that “there is hope … don’t give up hope.”

Every week, a florist arrives at her Ladera Heights condominium bearing an arrangement from one of her “special friends”: a client who, without anywhere else to turn, came to Rebhun with his plight. He has tested HIV positive, and his lover left him, not an uncommon tale for Rebhun to hear.

Becoming despondent, the man had failed to pay his taxes for the past few years, and now due to his tax delinquency, was beginning to have difficulty receiving medical benefits.

“I see this kind of thing on a regular basis,” says AIDS Project Los Angeles Public Benefits Specialist Jennifer Weck, referring to APLA clients who run into trouble receiving benefits. “Many of those who have tested positive work under the table, and don’t realize that they haven’t paid enough in taxes to receive benefits.”

“You cannot become immune to their tragedies … you can see the sadness in their eyes,” Rebhun says softly, her eyes misting over. “They have to know there is someone who can help, and I feel I have an insight into their needs.”

Weck advises, “If there is a way to contribute even a little (in taxes), then they should make the effort, or it will knock them out later, especially in trying to get Medicare benefits. It’s very frustrating.”

When you need Rebhun, the first thing that strikes you is her intensity and conviction. She possesses a quiet demeanor that takes the form of genuine concern for those who struggle against the odds. Rebhun takes time with her clients, gently coaxing out their plights, and working with them to deliver affidavits for the IRS to explain their delinquency.

“They are people, too,” she says, speaking of IRS employees. “They do care because they are human beings like any one of us. They must be made to understand.”

Almost one-third of Joyce’s clients are recovering from substance abuse, and finding their way back into the system that can be fraught with obstacles. Aside from the back taxes that are due, there are also penalties and fees attached that can make repayment a severe hardship.

This is when it becomes crucial for Joyce to show the traumas her clients have endured. She claims that 90 percent of her clients are relieved of penalty abatements, which can amount to as much as 40 percent of the balance due.

But they have to take control. Some are reluctant to relinquish control of their affairs, seeing it as a final step toward dependence on others.

“They become petrified of `opening their box’ of records and receipts,” Rebhun says. “There has to be that final step.”

(Rebhun offers a free consultation as assistance to persons with AIDS. For information on consultation and fees, call (310) 216-5988 – Editor)

By GEOFFREY-MARTIN CYR
APLA UPDATE

-EDITOR

Los Angeles Times – Personal Health

Treating Tax Abuse

‘The people who work there [at the IRS] are human beings like anyone else. But they must be made to care.’ – Joyce Rebhun, tax therapist

A Therapist Helps Recovering Substance Abusers With a Special Problem the IRS

The people who work there at the IRS are human beings like anyone else. But they must be made to care.

During the last four years of his daily use of alcohol and cocaine, John G. didn’t do a lot of things.

He didn’t pay attention to his wife, who eventually divorced him.

He didn’t pay for insurance, which cost him his BMW.

He didn’t pay his bills, which led to the loss of his beachfront condominium.

But when he entered a substance abuse recovery program in 1986, something else he hadn’t paid haunted him even more. It was the debt he owed to the Internal Revenue Service.

“I stopped paying taxes in 1982 when my marriage broke up, and then I went exempt in 1983 so I could put money aside and pay it back,” said John, a motion picture lighting technician who asked that his last name not be used. “That didn’t happen though, because my drug and alcohol use got in the way. By the time I went into the recovery house, I owed $60,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. There didn’t seem to be any way out.”

As it turned out, there was.

Through a friend, John met Joyce Rebhun, a Los Angeles tax therapist whose job, as she sees it, is to sensitize the IRS to emotional crises people go through that keep them from filing tax returns. Since going into private practice four years ago, Rebhun has successfully gotten tax penalty abatements for cancer patients, rape victims, couples who have experienced the death of a child and, most recently, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

Several clients afflicted with alcoholism failed to pay taxes for more than 30 years. “This doesn’t excuse, but it explains, said Rebhun, a 23-year tax attorney who worked with the IRS.

“Any sickness – and alcoholism is a sickness – has to be reasonable cause [for not filing].

“Why should alcoholism be different than cystic fibrosis?”

That question, she says, is not just a rhetorical one. After clients sign affidavits chronicling their history of substance abuse, Rebhun says she has presents them to examiners at the IRS with positive results. In many cases, she said the IRS has been both “caring are understanding.”

The IRS? Caring? Understanding?

“They do care,” Rebhun said emphatically. “The people who work there are human beings like anyone else. But the must be made to care. They must be mat to understand.”

So where do alcoholism and drug abuse: fit into the IRS’ current level of under standing?

Barbara Meckle, acting public affair director with the IRS’s Fresno office said that alcoholism isn’t cited frequently when people apply for penalty abatements based on reasonable cause. Never the less, she said, “the IRS would view alcoholism as a medical condition. We would need documentation from the person’s physician, a description of the effect the alcoholism had, and then we would look at the person’s tax payment history.”

To the suggestions that some non-alcoholics might seize the opportunity to get off the financial hook with the IRS by inventing a nonexistent substance abuse: problem, Rebhun only shook her head: don’t think anyone says they are alcoholic unless they are terribly afflicted with the disease.”

Rebhun’s willingness to work we recovering substance abusers, who inevitably have incomplete or nonexistent t~ records, isn’t shared by all tax accountants.

“A lot of firms don’t want to attack these problems,” said Harold Levy, an entertainment industry attorney in Los Angeles. “Rebhun has the reputation of being able to work with these people and recently has gotten some landmark decisions relative to penalty abatement and alcoholism.”

“Not only has she saved people from the loss of everything they have,” said Andrew Landay, a Santa Monica estate planning attorney who has referred several clients to Rebhun. “But she also has prevented a lot of people going to jail.”

As Rebhun’s reputation in the recovering community has increased, so have the number of calls that she receives each day asking for help. On a recent afternoon, Rebhun’s answering machine clicked on nearly 30 times within an hour.

Now that the extension deadline for filing tax returns has passed (the last day for filing a second extension for federal income tax was Aug. 15), Rebhun said that many of those calls become more desperate.
“That’s when I’ll get three suicide calls a day,” she said.

Although a small number of her clients are women, Rebhun said that 99% of the 15 to 20 people she sees each week are men. Men also tend not to file for much longer periods of time than women, she said.

But women often inherit their husband’s tax problems. Rebhun recalled one woman who had been married for 20 years. For the first 15 years, the woman’s husband simply placed their joint tax return in front of her and asked for her signature. For the last five years, however, the man’s alcoholism grew increasingly worse, and unbeknownst to her, he stopped filing taxes. By the time the woman came to Rebhun’s office, her marriage was over and the IRS had placed a levy on her wages at work.

“The IRS said she should have known,” Rebhun said. “They never even went after him, because he had an erratic employment record. She was beside herself. But I was able to help her, to make them see what had happened.”

A Common Problem

Professionals who work in the field of alcohol and drug abuse agreed that non-filing of taxes is a common problem for people who enter recovery programs.

“When alcoholics and addicts get into recovery, it’s common for them to say, ‘I thought stopping would be the hardest thing.’ But really, the hardest part becomes the piecing back together of their lives,” said Michael Samko, a Del Mar, Calif., psychologist who works with people in recovery. “Very often they don’t have the coping mechanisms to know how to do that.”

Samko said that many of his patients have tried to run from the IRS for years, changing addresses frequently or taking jobs where they don’t have to report their incomes: “They are much more likely to have a relapse.”

Tom Kenny, substance abuse program director for the Motion Picture and Television Fund in Los Angeles, estimated that at least 25% of recovering alcoholics owe money to the IRS.

“A lot of them have gone exempt, and that’s where the problem is. It’s a perfect trap for a person who has an alcohol or substance abuse problem,” said Kenny, who also is co-founder of Cocaine Anonymous.

“They’re spending that money on alcohol and drugs, and when it comes time to pay up, they can’t. And then they get a 25% penalty and interest tacked on top of that.”

One man in recovery owed the IRS $5,000 in back taxes, Kenny said. But by the time he was able to return to work and face the financial wreckage of his past, Kenny said the man owed the IRS nearly $20,000.

“It’s worse than with the credit card people,” he said. “At least you can go bankrupt with them.”

Although he said there was no way of knowing how many recovering people have relapses because of the emotional stress, Kenny said, “The anxiety level for people and the IRS is really high.”

Rebhun worked as a corporate tax attorney and later with the IRS for five years, but it has only been in recent years that she became sensitized to what she calls the human issues behind tax returns. After going into private practice in 1985, marrying an aeronautical engineer and having a baby the same year, Rebhun said she also gained a personal understanding of an alcoholic’s downward spiral.

“I was working 20 hours a day, and began turning to alcohol as a tranquilizer,” she recalled. “You start out with just one drink, and pretty soon it is four or five. You wake up with a headache and hangover the next day and discover you’re drinking again.”

Soon, Rebhun sought help from a psychiatrist and overcame her problem. Not long afterward, she began working with recovering alcoholics and addicts whose lives have become completely unraveled.
As for John G., who now is preparing to make his appeal to the IRS three years after entering a recovery program, some of his anxiety has been alleviated.

“Rebhun has made me feel that there is some hope of working out a solution,” he said. “What I keep remembering now is the decision I made when I was at the end of my rope, when all my credit cards were maxed out, and I got that letter from the IRS.

“I wasn’t ready to commit suicide,” he said. “I chose to get sober instead.”

By AURORA MACKEY

- Tuesday, August 22, 1981

Money Magazine

Joyce Rebhun, The Tax Therapist Will See You Now

Money Magazine

Her clients call Joyce Rebhun a “tax therapist.” While the title might sound as though it belongs to a kooky new character on L.A. Law, Rebhun, a 45-year-old Los Angeles tax attorney and C.P.A., is deadly serious. A former Internal Revenue Service auditor, she has since 1985 assisted more than 3,000 clients who failed to pay their taxes because of personal crises such as drug or alcohol.

Rebhun works to cut deals with the IRS.

dependency, medical catastrophes and emotional traumas. “The terror of the IRS becomes a terrible block to putting their lives together,” Rebhun maintains. Her mission: convincing IRS agents to either lower her clients’ tax penalties, abate them or negotiate a payment plan. Her cost: $2,500 for a typical client billed at $250 an hour.

Rebhun says she has had some impressive successes. For example, in the spring of 1988 she persuaded the IRS to drop $19,130 in late-filing and late-payment penalties for a cystic fibrosis patient whose C.P.A. failed to file his tax returns during his two years of on-and-off hospitalization.

A reformed problem drinker, Rebhun has spent much of her time lately trying to get penalty abatements for drug and alcohol abusers. “I tell my clients,” she says, “your sickness is not forever, and your tax problem can be interim too.” She explains that recovering addicts and alcoholics who can prove to the IRS that they lost control of their lives are prime candidates for abatements. Some examples that would bolster a case: an unraveled marriage, a job loss, or a repossessed car.

Somewhat surprisingly, the IRS applauds Rebhun’s efforts. Says Steven Pyrek, an IRS public affairs officer in Washington, D.C.: “If this tax therapist is bringing taxpayers back on the rolls, there’s some good in that-this country is getting the money it’s owed.”

You don’t necessarily need a therapist to handle a tax delinquency, however. If you can document your crisis with letters from physicians, write to your regional IRS service center (the local address is in your 1040 booklet) and ask for a penalty abatement for humanitarian reasons.

- Laura Meyers – November 1989

Savvy Woman

FEAR OF FILING

An L.A. lawyer takes on the I.R.S. and relieves some April anxiety.

Savvy Magazine Cover

EVERYONE GETS NERVOUS AROUND APRIL 15. BUT FOR Joyce Rebhun’s clients, the deadline for filing taxes can provoke real terror. Rebhun, a tax attorney in Los Angeles, specializes in non-filers, people who have failed to pay taxes for as many as 20 years.

Rebhun’s clients aren’t die hard tax cheats. In fact, they’re primarily professionals who have somehow fallen out of the system, usually thanks to a divorce, illness or longstanding alcohol or drug addiction.
“Every thing has had to take priority over their taxes,” Rebhun says. That’s why her average client owes $100,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.

The 46-year-old attorney, often described as a “tax therapist,” counsels clients about how to re-enter the system. She also urges the IRS to waive the penalties her clients owe, an average 40 percent of their bills. Her aggressive, persistent campaigning usually softens the agents-they forgo penalties for 90 percent of her cases.

“My clients are often coming back into the system at a particularly vulnerable point,” Rebhun explains. “A bad experience at the IRS might be their justify cation to go back to alcohol.”

While it’s easy to understand why some of the nation’s workers fail to pay taxes from time to time, what is it that drives some non-filers underground for years on end? Rebhun says it’s largely due to the exhaustive media attention paid to high-profile tax-fraud cases. “They feel defenseless,” she says of the non-filers. “If Leona Helmsley, with all her money, can get sent to jail they wonder what’s going to happen to them. ”

-Paul Tough – APRIL 1990

Santa Monica Outlook

Surviving those IRS blues

Tax ‘therapist’ has help it fiscal failures

Trouble with the IRS

Sometimes they just walk away from whole mess, leaving wives, children, homes and jobs behind. They go underground, changing their names, their Social Security numbers and their lives – all to escape the long arm of the IRS. Sometimes they fight on against an ever-rising flood of delinquent taxes. Sometimes they teeter on the brink of having businesses padlocked, wages levied homes attached and bank accounts swept clean.

Whatever their situations, by the time they come to see Dr. Joyce Rebhun – Dr. in doctorate of finance – they usually have one thing in common: They’re desperate.

To those who seek her help, the Los Angeles tax “therapist” is white knight, mother confessor, Dutch uncle and miracle worker all wrapped up in one. Since incorporating in 1983, Rebhun says she has seen 1,800 clients-95 percent to 99 percent of’ them with serious tax problems-and has found herself filing 200 delinquent tax returns a month. 12 months a year.

She holds their hands, listens to their troubles, straightens up then’ tangled tax returns and sets them on the road to fiscal responsibility.

In return she demands two things of clients, besides her $200-an-hour fee: that they be honest with her and that they do what she says.

“You have good taxpayers who are victims of the system, and you have people who are victims of their own problems which get them into tax trouble. They’re victims of alcohol, drugs, compulsive gambling, broken marriages and broken dreams. Either way, they have to he straightened out,” says Rebhun, whose clientele includes a high percentage of South Bay and Westside residents.

“You also have very bad taxpayers – tax evaders and tax cheats. Them I do not represent. I have to feel that the person is at least trying to walk the straight and narrow, to come back into the system.”
The 43-year-old Rebhun comes well prepared to the task: She’s a former IRS tax fraud specialist and corporate tax planner.

A celebrity in her field

She’s more than a little nonplussed to discover that her specialization has turned into something o fa celebrity. During this last month of pre-tax deadline news coverage-returns must he filed by April 15-she has been quoted in Newsweek, appeared on NBC’s Today show, made the cover of USA Today and been interviewed for CBS Nightly News and the Cable News Network.

She also has found herself working 15-18 hour days, six and seven days a week. The emergency nature of her business makes it hard to say no, she says.

One recent Friday she was at the IRS office when it opened at 7a.m. “I had a client they were going to padlock for delinquent payroll taxes. I almost died on the spot.” she says. “He was a good taxpayer, but they weren’t giving him time to work it out. I got him an extension and he will make good, but it was very close; they had the writ of seizure to close him down.”

It’s frighteningly easy to end up in tax trouble, she says.

The average person with a $20,000 to 30,000 income who doesn’t file a return several years could easily end up with six-figure tax liability. There’s interest the deficiency with penalties that can reach 25 percent. If fraud or negligence involved, that can add as much as 50 percent to the interest and 75 percent to taxes owed.

A lot of people get into tax problems cause of an illness or the loss of a loved one, says Rebhun, who spends 20 to 25 hours a week on the road visiting IRS offices and tax franchise boards across Southern California on behalf of her clients.

“One woman explained to me that she went crazy when she found out she had cancer and she didn’t pay her taxes for two years. She ended up with a $10,000 liability, which she was afraid she would never be able to pay off.

‘It was crazy’

“She was disabled and was able to work only part time, and the state and the IRS were going to levy her and take away everything but $75 a week. It was crazy. She made only $850 a month, and $550 that went for rent, $300 for food, and ie still had transportation back and forth to work and her utilities to pay-she was in the hole to begin with. I made them put her on suspension – no payments until she gets on her feet, if ever.”

Another client had a wife who had brain cancer, and he devoted 18 years and all his resources-to caring for her. Once she died, he came in to clear up his tax liability, which by then was $70,000.
To do that he’s taking consulting jobs as well as managing a small manufacturing firm.

“At age 70 you should be able to enjoy what life you have left, not have to work two jobs,” Rebhun says. “By the time he pays his personal taxes and his delinquent taxes, there’s not much left and he’ll be paying on that debt the rest of his life.”

A lot of people become martyrs to the system because they don’t know how to take care of themselves in that system, she says.

“One client from Torrance was called in for an IRS audit, but the appointment was canceled because the auditor was sick. The client assumed she’d call and reschedule. He even dropped her a note and sent her additional information. When he didn’t hear from her, he assumed things were all taken care of.

“Months later the IRS put him into collection and presented him with a $15,000 tax bill, plus penalties. He couldn’t understand what had happened and couldn’t get anyone to talk to him so
he paid the bill.

“It turned out he had moved and they had sent the audit to the wrong address. He was left with terrible fear of the IRS and came to me to have his next tax return done by a specialist.

“I filed an appeal and got the full amount of the deficiency returned, plus interest.”

The six years Rebhun spent teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and 10 years divided between the IRS and corporate tax departments left her totally unprepared for the magnitude of the non-filing problem in the United States, she says.

“Twenty to 30 percent of Americans don’t file income tax returns. I find that shocking. And it extends to professional as well as non-professional people: doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, football stars, blue-collar workers, actors and the self-employed.

95 percent men

Rebhun, who has five degrees including her doctorate in finance, finds that 95 percent of such clients are men.

Non-filing is a man’s problem, not a woman’s, she says. A woman will correct it within a year or two. She’ll get hysterical and do something about it, Rebhun says.

“Men tend to let their problems run away with them. A man will average six or seven years in arrears, and even then it’s usually a girlfriend hoping to become a wife or a mother who hunts me up, pays the retainer and drags the man in to get the problem cleared up.”

Fully 55 percent of America’s 108 million taxpayers will find themselves with tax problems at one time or another. “Thanks to the new tax act we’re going to have more delinquent filings, more mistakes and more misinterpretations of the law. This supposedly simplified system is confusing everybody: tax attorneys, CPAs and tax preparers alike.

“I don’t think it has helped anyone. It didn’t help our government, because we’re riot going to bring in enough revenue. Middle-income taxpayers are taking it on the chin, the poor got off the tax rolls, but then they never shou Id have been thereto begin with, and wealthy people are pretty much in the same position that they were before, which is very comfortable.”

But the thing that’s doing the most damage, that’s creating the most anger is the unnecessary complexity of the law, she says. People feel like they need a CPA to fill out a 1040A. “A good tax law must be simple and produce revenue, be fair and easy to administer. What we have created is a monster.

“If we wanted to be fair, we’d have a flat rate tax-everybody pays 10 to 15 percent and no deductions considered. That would be fair, easy to enforce and would affect everyone.”

- April 5th 1988 by Verne Palmer STAFF WRITER

Chicago Sun Times

This tax specialist helps those who’ve hit hard times

Even if you haven’t paid your taxes in six years and the IRS is ready to impound your paycheck, Joyce Rebhun will try to save you-but only if you’re pure of heart.

This tax specialist helps those who've hit hard times

The tax attorney specializes in helping recovering alcoholics and addicts, rape victims, cancer patients, AIDS victims, men who just divorced or just lost their jobs and parents who have just lost a child.

These are people whose setbacks in life have affected their tax filings. Several clients haven’t filed for 10 years and one couple hadn’t filed for 35 years. Her average client owes the IRS close to six figures, said Rebhun, who is based in Los Angeles but has clients nationwide.

“The world is full of straight arrows, but every straight arrow can get sick, can get cancer, lose his job. Basically they’re honest and decent people who got off the track for some reason,” she said. Once they fell from grace, a tax phobia developed and it became extremely difficult to look the IRS in the eye.

She told an attorney friend who lost his child to kidney disease “and lost his heart. He just didn’t care. He would throw away his American Express receipts for legitimate expenses. He just didn’t file for years.

Can we fault him?” she asked.

She insisted her clients are not criminals.

“We have no crooks here. If I smell anything, they’re out the door,” said Rebhun, a one-time fraud investigator for the IRS who is a certified public accountant and holds a master’s degree in business administration and a doctorate in tax history.

She insisted they are not greedy.

“The greedy people do not file and paid and cover all their bases,” she said.

She personally intervenes with the IRS in an attempt to get audits postponed, wage garnishments lifted, penalties abated and payback schedules set up.

To be successful, Rebhun and the client have to show that alcohol, drugs or personal tragedy destroyed all aspects of a person’s life-not just his tax-filing abilities-and that he has reformed and his life is back in gear.

But these people are still going to owe back taxes and interest and may have to take out loans to pay those, she said. “We want people to pay their taxes,” Rebhun said. “We’ve go to get these people straightened out so they pay their fair share.”

When the situation is explained to the IRS, she said “they’re always helpful.” The IRS is not a monolithic, hard-hearted organization, she said, adding, “There are decent people there. They’re underpaid and they’re under-appreciated.”

Rebhun repeatedly referred to her practice as “her mission” and has earned a reputation as sort of the Mother Teresa of the tax business. But her expertise is not cheap: $250 an hour, although a sliding fee scale may apply, and she said she does more than her share of pro bono work.

“My clients come in at the last minute and under the most unfortunate circumstances. They come in in fear and panic,” she said. “They don’t have money to pay me, but I can’t turn them down.”

People with troubled lives can be difficult to work with. Our first interview was postponed because a client had called her, threatening suicide. He had come out of a drug hospital to find the IRS had garnished his paycheck, leaving him with only $75 a week.

Rebhun quickly had to fax documentation of his recent tax filing so the levy could be lifted.

“Every day we have these high level soap-opera situations,” she said.

“It’s life or death ”

By Bill Rumbler Personal Finance Writer

- SUNDAY, MARCH 24, 1991

Los Angeles Times

Coping With Income Tax Jitters

An Expert Offers Clues on How to Survive April 15 Panic

Coping With Income Tax Jitters

When the Internal Revenue Service unveiled its TV ad about the taxpayer stalked by his 1040 form, it tacitly admitted what everyone already knew: filing a tax return can be terrifying.

When the April 15 deadline closing in fast, tax phobia is rampant. Joyce Rebhun of Los Angeles is familiar with the symptoms, like depression and paranoia. In most cases, she prescribes a healthy dose of information and a shot of confidence. Sometimes, she steps in and intervenes.

Rebhun is a $200-an-hour income tax therapist. She has all the right credentials-a20-year tax attorney who has worked for the IRS, a certified public accountant with a doctorate in tax history-and something more: a determination to salvage the lives of people she calls “tax victims.”

“People come to me, not so much for tax ‘therapy’ but for tax ‘rescue,’” she says.

‘Depths of Despair’

“I help people who are burnout, and who have gone into hiding because of their tax problems. I don’t think we know the depths of despair some people have.”

Over the last three years, Rebhun has counseled nearly 1,800 delinquent or problem tax filers, most of them well-educated and well-heeled.

She’s gotten desperate calls in the middle of the night from physicians thrashing around in divorce webs, foreign entrepreneurs with U.S. holdings who didn’t know they had to pay Uncle Sam, absent-minded professors who put their 1040′s in desk drawers and forgot about them.

Many of her clients have not filed tax returns for 10 or more years, Rebhun reports, and at least two are 35 years in arrears.

But none of her people are tax evaders, she insists. “I screen out people who have been dishonest. The only thing I have going for me with the IRS is my credibility, so I won’t go in with a crook.”
The root of tax phobia, Rebhun says, is insecurity stemming from ignorance. “We’re forced to cope with a form that we don’t understand and that changes from year to year. It can make you feel terribly afraid.”

Cash flow problems also add to tax woes, she says. “People are not living within their means. Very often they’re desperate for cash so they claim too many exemptions and don’t have enough money taken out of their paychecks.”

Many of Rebhun’s clients are victims of inept tax preparers, like the business professor who never examined his return and didn’t know his preparer had counted his university income twice.
And, of the 10 to 15 new clients she accepts each week, Rebhun says six to eight “come in with the same story: they’re men who have been devastated by divorce and who can’t get their exwives to turn over financial records so they can straighten out their returns.”

Whatever their circumstances are, tax victims have the same immediate challenge, says Rebhun-they have to get over their paralysis and take action. Which is where she comes in.

The Direct Approach

Rebhun’s course of therapy starts with a direct appeal to the IRS for leniency and more time. “I pick up the phone and call, or make a personal visit, and I say, `Look, I have somebody here who’s in real trouble.’

“And they always respond. All my success stories have come about because of the kindness of the IRS.”

Kindness? The IRS?

“You have to remember,” Rebhun says, “that you’re talking to another human being. They’re not devoid of emotion.”

Once the IRS agrees to delay the scheduled action, be it an auditor a levy on wages or property, Rebhun’s next step is to prod the tax victim out of his or her stupor.

“I must be firm with them,” she says. “They have to help themselves. We make a list of the things they have to do, like go to the bank and get back copies of statements.”

Most tax victims only need a little prodding, she says. “When they see me take over, they shake off their depression and become more confident. Sometimes I see a complete change of personality.”
To avoid stress and shock down the road, she says, bone up now on changes in the tax laws, especially in the amount of itemized deductions that can be taken.

“That’s going to make a huge difference, especially to people in the middle income tax rates but with all the changes, you’re going to come out with fewer deductions.”

And never assume that sheer intelligence or expertise in any other field will come in handy in the psychic jungle of income tax filing. Rebhun says that some of her most accomplished clients “have a mental block about taxes because they’re intimidated.”

She should know; it happened to her. When she got a notice that the IRS wanted to audit her 1983 tax return, Rebhun recalls, she hit the panic button.

“I had nightmares that I lost all my records-and I keep meticulous records. Finally, I said to myself, `You’re in the system; you have to deal with this like everybody else.”

By KATE CALLEN, United Press International

- April 10, 1989

New York Times – Law

For Special Cases, a “Tax Therapist”

Special to the New York Times

For Special Cases, a Tax Therapist

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 7 – As a self-proclaimed “tax therapist,” Joyce Rebhun has helped thousands of late filers who have special emotional problems. Her job here is to get them penalty fee waivers from the Internal Revenue Service.

“There’s a market for misery,” said Ms. Rebhun, a tax lawyer who worked for five years as an I.R.S. examiner. “People are terrified of the I.R.S., and there are a lot of people who are alcoholics, compulsive gamblers and over eaters who feel so bad about themselves that they just shut out the world. Often this means they don’t file their taxes anymore.”

Michael R. is one such example. While working as the chief deputy to an elected state official, Michael would often drink a fifth of Jack Daniels followed by a six-pack of beer.

“I was making massive decisions for the California government that involved millions of dollars and I was drunk,” Michael said.

Ultimately, his alcoholism led to severe personal problems, including a three-year hiatus in filing taxes. When he finally decided to seek help for his sickness, he had amassed $50,000 in unpaid bills and owed $40,000 in back taxes plus $20,000 in I.R.S. penalties and interest.

He brought his problem to Ms. Rebhun. On her advice, he declared bankruptcy.

“She told me that we could probably reduce the amount I owed the I.R.S. by coming clean regarding my alcoholism,” he said.

Abatements for Illness

Citing a clause in the federal tax code shat allows for penalty fee abatements in cases of illness, Ms. Rebhun argued successfully that Michael’s alcoholism was a bona fide illness that prevented him from taking responsibility for filing his taxes.

Earlier this year, Michael took out a $45,000 loan to repay the back taxes and interest he owed. The penalty fee was dropped.

Getting back on track, Ms. Rebhun says, is the key w having penalty fees waived. I.R.S. agents must have proof that a delinquent filer has turned his lift around, such as receipts for paid bills or letters of attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, or else the abatement request is denial.

Revenue service agents in both the Washington office and Life field office in Los Angeles Say the Government would rather work with delinquent filers in getting them back into the system than be an obstacle to their rehabilitation.

“The agents have to be awfully careful in making sure that someone is an alcoholic or drug addict if they say they are,” said Robert Giannangcli of the Los Angeles branch of the I.R.S. “If someone was so drugged out that they couldn’t take care of business, if they managed to screw up the rest of their personal and professional life along with not filing their taxes, then that might show they really were ill.”

Mr. Giannangcli said Ms. Rebhun’s tax specialty appears to be rare.

“She is the first tax attorney specializing in penalty abatements I’ve ever seen,” he said, “and I’ve been with the I.R.S. for 26 years.”

- FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1989