My tax guy messed up. Now what do I do!?!

[Ed Chandler]

Hey there BP, I need some advice!  After recently reading the book on tax strategies for the savvy real estate investor, I decided to review my past returns. Guess what!  My taxes are all messed up!  

The good news is the error is in my favor as my tax guy didn't carry over unallowed passive losses and then didn't apply them to a property sale last year. That mistake bumped me into a higher tax bracket which my W2 witholdings weren't enough to cover.  I ended up paying, but after finding this mistake I'm pretty sure they'll owe me instead.  The funny part is that my past returns that I did myself are good. It's only the last two years where I used a tax preparer BECAUSE I had real estate transactions I didn't want to mess up on my tax filings!

Any advice on how best to correct this with the IRS?  Has anyone else had to correct a prior year return like this before?  Any lessons learned to share?  Thanks all!