About the firm · Spokane, Washington · Clients nationwide

Your accounting department, with seventeen years of IRS experience behind it.

Seat Tax & Consulting is a boutique accounting firm. We take care of the accounting you need and nothing you don’t. I am Heather Seat, CPA. I was a Revenue Agent for the Internal Revenue Service for seventeen years, and I started this firm to come alongside your business as your accounting department.

For monthly clients we keep the books and prepare the returns. For new and existing small businesses and solopreneurs, we help get the business set up and coach you as it grows. We prepare returns and do tax planning. If you are behind or under audit, we get you caught up and represent you before the IRS. And I consult and teach for tax practitioners and tax attorneys. We work with clients nationwide.

You didn’t start your business to do the accounting.

The financial and tax compliance part of your business is critical, but it is not what made you excited to start it. Here is why I am the right person to help.

You have a problem and you want to know whether it can be solved. That is the right instinct, and the service pages answer it faster than this one will. But handing over your books, your returns or your client’s exam is not a small thing, and you should know exactly who is taking them.

How I got here

I studied accounting at Whitworth University in Spokane. The program was linked with Gonzaga, so I had the privilege of studying at both. After graduating in 2003 I worked in the mortgage industry and fell in love with real estate. I studied education briefly before coming back to accounting.

In 2009 I joined the IRS as a Revenue Agent, auditing small businesses and self-employed taxpayers. I was there seventeen years. I was always an auditor, but I also taught, trained new agents, worked in the Special Enforcement Program, and was a Lead Revenue Agent and subject matter expert by the time I left.

That adds up to a well-rounded seventeen years, and it’s why the firm looks the way it does: books and taxes for small business owners and self-employed people, catch-up and representation for anyone behind or under audit, and consulting for tax practitioners and attorneys who need someone with this background on a case.

Running a small business is hard. You need someone on your team you can trust with the financial side. That’s me.

The difference

Seventeen years of seeing what actually goes wrong.

Seventeen years of auditing small businesses and solopreneurs means I have seen a lot of business types, and a lot of different ways people keep their books. I have heard how well-intentioned owners let the books, or the returns, get away from them — or never got clarity from the bookkeeper or preparer they hired about who was responsible for which part.

A large part of my job was teaching other Revenue Agents how to conduct audits, and educating taxpayers in plain language about their filing responsibilities and how to keep tax-ready books. Those are the skills that set me apart.

Seventeen years as an IRS Revenue Agent, auditing sole proprietorships, partnerships, S‑corporations, small C‑corporations and high-income individuals
Special Enforcement Program — complex examinations, cash-intensive businesses, non-filed returns and unreported income cases
IRS-certified instructor for more than a decade — Lead Instructor for Revenue Agent Basic Training. I taught agents how to do this work

I spent seventeen years looking at records after the fact, when it was too late to fix them. I started this firm so I could work with small businesses and solopreneurs and have the records be right the first time.

Qualifications

The technical detail — Special Enforcement Program work, the specific examination experience, expert witness training — is on the pages for tax practitioners and tax attorneys.

Credential: Certified Public Accountant — Washington State, License #50082
Federal service: Seventeen years, Internal Revenue Service — Internal Revenue Agent, Small Business / Self-Employed
Special Enforcement Program: Complex examinations — cash-intensive businesses, non-filed returns, unreported income and civil fraud cases; lead agent on a multi-entity team audit
Instruction: IRS-certified instructor for more than ten years — Lead Instructor, Revenue Agent Basic Training; on-the-job instructor for new agents
Education: Bachelor of Arts in Accounting — Whitworth University and Gonzaga University, Spokane