My company is in a situation with our accountants.
We trusted them to handle our sales tax for 2010, which they failed to provide to the IRS in a timely fashion and my company got fined.
Move forward to June 2011 and my company gets yet another statement from the IRS saying we still owe sales tax from 2010. Although its a small amount (about $60) it still shows that according to the IRS my company has issues paying our taxes.
When my company goes to get some credit im sure stuff like this will come up such as our failure to pay sales tax, failure to pay in a timely manner, etc.
Failure to pay sales taxes isn’t going to show up on any credit report.
Your accountant is an agent of your company and if they were incompetent or negligent, you may have a case against them, but I doubt you could recover much more than the cost of the fine.
Possibly, but I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure. The IRS does not like to share the methods by which they decide who to keep an eye on or to audit.
In general, if your accountant commits a serious error, then any subsequent penalties and interest may be covered by their E&O insurance. Some accountants will cover them as a matter of policy even if their insurance doesn’t. But you’d have to make a pretty convincing case that they screwed up really hard.
Libel? No. The accountants never wrote or said anything about your company (according to what you outlined). Libel is a false statement of fact about an individual or company.
There are thing you could probably sue them for, but libel isn’t one of them (even if their actions had hurt your credit rating).