James L. Benoit, Enrolled Agent, is a tax specialist and consultant of the firm Cota CPA, PC. He is the owner and principal of a consulting business, J.L. Benoit & Company LLC, which specializes in providing advice and representation in federal income and employment tax cases involving examinations, claims, appeals and fraud investigations.Prior to starting his consulting company, Jim worked for the Internal Revenue Service for 32 years, retiring in 2007 as a GS-14 level Supervisory Internal Revenue Agent (Group Manager). From 2002 to mid-2007, Jim supervised a group of employment tax specialists conducting field examinations of small and large businesses in central and western Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont. He supervised revenue agents and revenue officer examiners, selected and assigned cases for examination and approved enforcement actions. This assignment included supervising a team of employment tax specialists examining a Fortune 500 company, as well as supervising examiners auditing medium size and small businesses of all kinds. During this time, Jim was a member of a national team of IRS managers and examiners that worked on redesigning examination case procedures - procedures which were implemented in 2006.
Before he became an IRS field group manager, Jim was an Internal Revenue Agent based in the Burlington, Vermont office. He conducted examinations of individual income tax returns and income and employment tax returns of small and large private and public companies in Vermont. Jim spent four years of his career working on criminal tax cases in the offices of the U.S. Attorneys in Burlington and Rutland, the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI. In addition, he served as project coordinator for various statewide tax outreach programs, made presentations on behalf of the IRS at professional seminars and meetings, and was a trainer and classroom instructor of IRS agents and employees on federal tax and technology subjects.
Jim is a graduate of Rice Memorial High School, Champlain College and the University of Vermont. He resides in Burlington.
Enrolled Agent (EA) number: 88848
Expires March 31, 2009