A small practice, on purpose

Most people arrive here having already been circled by firms they found through a mailing list. Letters from four states away, promising settlements before anyone has looked at a single number of theirs.

That is a hard place to judge from. You cannot tell who is real, the promises all sound the same, and the one thing you actually need is somebody who will tell you what your situation genuinely is. Meanwhile the IRS keeps moving.

So this practice is deliberately small. When you call, you get one of the two of us. When you come in, you sit down with the person who is going to do the work and who will still be here next year.

Who we are

I am Martin Ferreira. I am an Enrolled Agent and a former Internal Revenue Service revenue officer, which means I spent years on the collection side of the IRS before I opened this practice. The process most people find bewildering is one I used to run.

Ashley Ferreira is also an Enrolled Agent. She and I are married and we run the office together.

What an Enrolled Agent is

An Enrolled Agent is licensed by the federal government, specifically by the Internal Revenue Service, and has unlimited rights to represent taxpayers before it. Not just to prepare a return, but to speak for you in a collection case, in an examination and on appeal, in every state.

Only three kinds of professional hold that unlimited right: Enrolled Agents, CPAs and attorneys. The difference with an Enrolled Agent is that the licence is federal and it is specifically about tax, rather than a general accounting or legal qualification that happens to include some.

What it means for you is that the person preparing your return is also the person who can defend it, and that the person you hire for an IRS problem can stand in your place rather than advise you from the sidelines.

Where we are

The office is at 21 Hampton Road, Suite 101 in the Exeter Professional Park, Exeter, NH 03833, about an hour north of Boston. Most of our clients come from Exeter and the surrounding Seacoast towns, and most of them we see in person.

That is the whole reason the practice works the way it does. I only write to taxpayers in New England, because I want to be able to sit down with the people I represent, and because if your case is with a Revenue Officer or a Revenue Agent in New England, somebody needs to be able to go and see them.

How I work

You will get a straight answer, including when it is not the one you were hoping for. If you do not qualify for an Offer in Compromise I will say so rather than take a fee to file one. If your prior return was fine, I will tell you that too.

Most people who call are braced for a lecture. That is not what happens. There is very little I have not seen, and none of it is as frightening once it is written down with a plan attached.