An Innocent Spouse Claim is worth considering in cases where the taxpayers jointly owe a lot of IRS debt. The downside is that the IRS does not generally approve these claims. Worse, most of the appeals to the courts have been IRS wins.
That said, it is still worth considering. Innocent spouse claims arise in cases where the tax understatement can be attributed to just one spouse. Additionally, the other spouse must have no knowledge or benefit from that understatement. The strategic advantage is that you might get a better result on the Reasonable Collection Potential formula by removing the one spouse from the liability.
An Offer-in-Compromise will only work if the taxpayers can show that they do not have the financial means that will enable them to pay the debt in full. The IRS does not accept offers for less than full pay merely because someone throws a number at them. Instead, they do a financial analysis. The results are plugged into the Reasonable Collection Potential formula. Removing one of the spouses from the liability could change the formula results and make the other spouse eligible for an offer.
