IRS Examination Planning 2026
A practitioner's first decisions on an exam happen before the first IDR is answered — often before the client has finished reading the notice. Type of contact (correspondence, office, or field), what triggered selection, the return's exposure points, and the client's recordkeeping posture all shape what representation should look like. With 2025 enforcement priorities continuing to shift — staffing realignments after the IRA funding pullback, sustained correspondence-exam volume on Schedule C and refundable-credit returns, renewed focus on high-income individuals and large partnerships under BBA — practitioners need a current read on how cases actually get worked.
The program covers how returns are selected, the differences between correspondence, office, and field exams and what each implies for engagement strategy, taxpayer rights under §7521 and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, recordkeeping standards examiners actually enforce, and industry-specific exposure factors. The frame is practical: how to set client expectations at intake, scope the engagement honestly, and make the early procedural choices that set up a defensible position rather than a reactive one.
For experienced EAs, CPAs, and attorneys who take exam representation work, regardless of how often it crosses the desk.
"Our best deal is always to become a monthly subscriber"
*Self-Study recording not available for NASBA CPE credit.
IRS Program #: 7Q3WU-T-00902-26
CTEC Course #: 6248-CE-00246
Charles Montecino
,
CPA, CGMA, CTRS
Charles K. Montecino, is a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Tax Resolution Specialist. He has
extensive experience in helping clients solve their IRS problems, and clients say he does it with
patience and, as one client put it, “without making me feel dumb.”
Charles has spent his 50 plus year career in public accounting, and 43 of those years running his own firm. He is a licensed CPA in New Jersey, a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist and a CGMA, Chartered Global Management Accountant. He serves on the Cooperation with IRS Committee and is a member of the Cannabis Interest Group with the New Jersey Society of CPAs. He is a member of the American Institute of CPAs, New Jersey Society of CPAs, and The Tax Resolution Academy.
He regularly consults with other practitioners in the Tax Resolution area in addition to being a referral source for clients of practitioners that are in over their head.
He also develops and presents CPE courses for other tax practitioners to improve their skills. He presently has twenty such courses. He enjoys passing on the skills he has learned to other
practitioners.
Charles earned his accounting degree from Rutgers University. When he is not working, he enjoys baseball, watching the Phillies and football, following both the Philadelphia Eagles and the Rutgers
team. He also enjoys fishing, traveling, golf, reading, his vacation home at the New Jersey shore and spending time with his family. He’s been married for 53 years to the best wife in the world and has
two daughters, a son-in-law and two grandsons.
He and his wife relocated to Lakeland, Florida in 2022. He enjoys playing golf with his friends and
especially the Tuesday night get togethers where they sit around the fire pit and smoke good cigars,
drink good whiskey and tell lots of lies!
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