Gwinnett County Seat
Two very different envelopes arrive here, and people treat them the same way. They should not.
Lawrenceville is the seat of Gwinnett County. The Justice & Administration Center on Langley Drive holds the courts and the county's tax administration, and county business licensing runs out of West Crogan Street. If you live anywhere in Gwinnett, this is the town your property assessment, your appeal, and your homestead exemption ultimately answer to.
Which is exactly why one particular mix-up happens here more than anywhere else. A reassessment notice from the county and a notice from the IRS look superficially similar — official envelope, dollar figure, a date on it — and they are entirely unrelated. Different authority, different deadline, different process, different person to talk to. Treating a federal notice like a county matter, or the reverse, wastes the window that mattered.
Glenn Sarver, EA holds the federal credential for exactly the second kind: an Enrolled Agent has unlimited rights to represent taxpayers before the IRS, in any state. He works Gwinnett from Duluth, twenty minutes from the courthouse.
What each notice actually is, and what it needs from you.
An annual notice of assessment states what the county believes your property is worth. It is not a bill, and it is not final — there is a defined window to appeal, and once it closes the valuation stands for the year. This is county business, handled through the Gwinnett board of assessors, and it has nothing to do with the IRS. If the number looks wrong, the time to act is when the notice arrives, not when the bill does.
Federal notices carry a code in the corner and a response date, and the two together tell you almost everything about how serious it is. Some are informational. Some are a proposed change to a return you already filed. A few are the start of collection activity, and those move on their own schedule whether or not anyone replies. The single worst response is putting it in a drawer, because most of what makes these solvable is time.
An Enrolled Agent is licensed federally by the Treasury and has unlimited practice rights before the IRS — the same representation scope as a CPA or attorney for tax matters, in every state. That means Glenn can speak to the IRS on your behalf, not just prepare a form and hand it back to you. Continuity matters here too: the person who prepared the return is the person who can defend it.
For business licensing it makes a real difference. The City of Lawrenceville issues its own occupational tax certificate, while businesses in unincorporated Gwinnett are licensed by the county. A Lawrenceville mailing address does not settle which of the two you are, and plenty of the surrounding area is unincorporated. Worth confirming before a renewal rather than after.
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Learn MoreMostly from people holding an envelope they would rather not have opened.
That depends on the notice code and the date printed on it, and those two things are the first thing to look at. Some notices want a document. Some propose a change you can dispute. Some start a clock you do not want to run out. Bring it in or read the code over the phone on 706-666-4733 — a two-minute look will tell you whether this is a filing job or a representation job.
Yes. That is what the Enrolled Agent credential permits, with a signed authorisation on file. Glenn can talk to the IRS on your behalf, request transcripts, respond to notices, and handle audits and collection matters. You do not have to be the one on the phone.
Property assessment appeals are a county process rather than a federal one, and they run on the county's timetable through its board of assessors. What we can do is tell you plainly whether the notice you have is that or something else, and make sure a federal matter is not sitting unaddressed while you deal with a county one. Knowing which is which is most of the battle.
Usually, and it is more common than people assume. Unfiled years are worked through in order, often starting with transcripts to establish what the IRS already has on record. It is a considerably better position than it feels like from the inside, and it gets better the sooner it starts rather than worse.
Free consultation for IRS notices, unfiled returns, tax preparation, and business accounting across Lawrenceville and Gwinnett County.