How a missed W-2 became a three-year IRS battle

The situation

In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Adrian was working remotely across multiple short-term contracts. Each contract generated its own W-2. When tax season came in 2022, Adrian and his wife uploaded all of their W-2s to their tax preparer’s secure portal.

The preparer missed two of them.

Roughly $90,000 of W-2 income never made it onto the 2021 return. Adrian and his wife signed off on what was prepared, trusting their long-time preparer. The IRS computer-matched the missing income against employer filings, and a Notice of Deficiency arrived.

The proposed adjustment: just under $20,000 in additional tax owed, and growing with interest every month.

“We submitted everything in their secure portal — every W-2, timestamped on our end. They missed two. We signed off without catching it. We trusted them.”

Adrian Duncan

What made this harder

The original tax preparer didn’t know how to handle an examination at this scale. They suggested Adrian file an Offer in Compromise. Adrian researched it himself, paid the application fee, submitted the paperwork, and the IRS rejected it.

Two years passed. The balance grew from $19,000 to over $21,000 with accruing interest. Correspondence cycled between Adrian and the IRS: three months for the IRS to respond, two months for Adrian to respond, then the cycle repeated.

Then the IRS escalated. A bank account lien notice arrived.

“It was very, very stressful. We saw it big in red on our IRS account portal — your bank account is in jeopardy of a potential lien. Just hearing something like that brings a certain kind of anxiety over you.”

Adrian Duncan

Life was not waiting

During the IRS battle, Adrian’s life kept happening, and not gently.

In 2023, Adrian and his wife bought their first house. Fifteen months later, in 2024, Adrian had shoulder surgery to repair a long-standing rotator cuff tear. Nine days post-surgery, he developed a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in his lungs.

He was hospitalized for four days. Bedbound. The pain, in his words, was the worst he’d ever felt.

Through all of it, the IRS bill sat over his head. Adrian was the sole breadwinner; his wife was at home full-time with their son. Then, to compound everything, they later rented out their first home, only to have the tenants stop paying within seven months. They were carrying two housing payments and no rental income while the IRS issue still hadn’t been resolved.

“I’m 42 years old, and that was one of the worst times of my life — dealing with the IRS issue while going through that.”

Adrian Duncan

How Adrian found GN Tax Service

Adrian is a fraud examiner by trade. When he started searching for help, he didn’t pick the first result. He investigated.

He found GN Tax Service on LinkedIn. He researched what “EA” meant. He studied the qualifications required to become an Enrolled Agent. He looked up the firm in the Division of Corporations records. He called the office directly to confirm a real person would answer.

“I had to really do my due diligence. When I saw EA after your name, I had no clue what EA was. I researched what it took to become one, the credentials, the qualifications. I went as far as the Division of Corporations to look up the business. Everything was turning out to be legitimate.”

Adrian Duncan

On the first phone call, James told Adrian the truth: this would be the firm’s first case at this caliber, but he would stand by Adrian’s side until the end.

Adrian and his wife prayed about it. They decided to trust GN Tax Service.

The work

Resolution took two and a half years of sustained effort, and required two distinct lines of work running in parallel.

Every IRS letter Adrian received went straight to GN Tax Service. Every notice was reviewed, every response drafted with care, every correspondence cycle managed.

What we found on close review

Two separate errors had compounded into Adrian’s $21,000 problem.

The first was already known: his prior preparer had missed two W-2s, omitting roughly $90,000 of income from the 2021 return. The IRS caught that one and proposed the deficiency.

The second error wasn’t obvious, and it wasn’t on the prior preparer. It was in the IRS’s own recalculation.

Because Adrian had worked multiple W-2 contracts in 2021, several employers had each withheld their own share of Social Security tax. Across those jobs, his total Social Security withholding had exceeded the annual maximum allowed per taxpayer, which meant he was entitled to a sizable Excess Social Security Withholding credit on Schedule 3 of his return. A direct, dollar-for-dollar credit against tax owed.

When the IRS recalculated his return after catching the missing W-2s, they did not credit him for that excess Social Security withholding. The deficiency they proposed reflected the corrected income, but missed the offsetting credit Adrian was legally owed.

A line-by-line forensic review of the IRS’s calculations is what surfaced it.

“When the IRS recalculates a return after a deficiency, they work from the data they have — and items like excess Social Security withholding from multiple employers don’t always get credited automatically. A close read of every line is what catches what an automated calculation misses.”

James Paige IV, EA, CTRC

The layered resolution

Adrian’s case was not resolved through a single negotiation. It was resolved through a layered strategy that addressed both errors and the consequences that had built up around them:

• Reconstruction of the 2021 return with all W-2s properly included
• Identification and correction of the IRS’s missed Excess Social Security Withholding credit, directly reducing tax owed
• Penalty abatement secured under reasonable cause provisions, removing accuracy-related penalties
• Interest recalculated automatically as the underlying tax was reduced
• Direct correspondence with the IRS on every notice across the three-year span: no letter unanswered

The outcome

In early 2026, Adrian received the final letter from the IRS. The case was closed.

Adrian and his wife did not have to write a check to the IRS out of pocket. The remaining $3,200 was satisfied by offsetting their next federal refund.

The bank lien threat: gone. The notices: gone. The three-year shadow over their family: lifted.

“When we got that letter from the IRS, it just puts a major smile on our face. Not only a smile — it did something to us. We made it. We beat this. We didn’t look at it as just us winning. We looked at it as a win for GN Tax Service as well, because we couldn’t have done it without you.”

Adrian Duncan

In Adrian’s own words

“GN Tax Services stood out to me. The wording captured the moment and allowed me to dig further. After everything I researched, after speaking with James, I felt like we made the right decision. Three years later, that decision proves itself.”

Adrian Duncan, on choosing GN Tax Service

“It’s been an amazing year. The IRS issue is gone. We’re forever grateful. I think you guys would be a great asset to anyone having any type of IRS tax issue — especially to the caliber of what we had.”

Adrian Duncan, on the result

Why this matters

Adrian’s case represents what happens when IRS issues are not reviewed thoroughly. A missed W-2 became a $21,000 liability. A rejected Offer in Compromise became two years of correspondence going nowhere. And on top of all of that, an IRS recalculation that missed a credit Adrian was legally owed.

The lesson isn’t that mistakes happen; they do, on every side. The lesson is that thorough review catches what hurried review misses. Every line of every notice deserves a careful read. Every IRS calculation deserves a verification. Every potential credit deserves to be claimed.

Don’t assume the numbers on the IRS notice are necessarily correct.