About Tax Hardship Guide

Tax Hardship Guide is an independently operated informational website. We publish researched, plain-English explanations of the IRS programs that people facing tax debt most often search for — the Fresh Start initiative, Offers in Compromise, Currently Not Collectible status, and installment agreements.

What this site is not

We are not a law firm, not a CPA firm, and not an enrolled-agent practice. No one here is your representative before the IRS. We do not provide personalized tax, legal, or financial advice, we do not prepare returns, and we do not file anything on your behalf. Nothing on this site creates a client relationship of any kind. For guidance about your specific situation you need a licensed professional — a CPA, an Enrolled Agent, or a tax attorney — who can review your actual records.

How we research

Every factual claim we make about an IRS program is sourced to the IRS's own published guidance at IRS.gov, and we link the specific source page so you can verify it yourself and read the primary material. IRS rules, dollar thresholds, and forms change over time; when we cannot confirm a detail against current IRS.gov guidance, we leave it out rather than guess. If you find something on this site that is out of date or wrong, that is a bug, and we want to fix it.

Honest authorship

We do not invent credentials, and we do not publish under a fake "expert" persona to look more authoritative than we are. This is a small, independently run site whose value is careful research and clear writing about public information — not professional representation. We would rather tell you plainly what we are than dress it up.

How we pay for the site

Some outbound links to tax-relief companies are affiliate links, and we may later run display ads. That is how the site is funded. It does not change which programs we cover or how honestly we describe them — including telling you when a program is something you can pursue yourself, for free, directly with the IRS. See our affiliate disclosure for the full detail.

Questions or corrections: see the privacy page for how we handle (and don't collect) your data.