Navigating the Swamp

I was explaining to my daughter last night what we’re creating at TaxLifeboat.com.  Tax professionals, I said, are excellent at advising and preparing taxes for their clients.  Once a client gets in trouble with the IRS, however, the client falls into what I call the ‘swamp.’  Lots of books and articles have been written by tax pros about different parts of this swamp but not many people know it well.  As a consequence, both delinquent taxpayers and advisors trying to help them end up stumbling around in the dark.

What we’ve done at TaxLifeboat.com is organize the voluminous amount of information on this subject and identify the possible solutions.  Staying with our ‘swamp’ analogy think of these possible solutions as the goals you want to reach on the other side of the swamp.  In creating the website, we were surprised to discover approximately 350,000 possible paths through the swamp to get to the desired result.  Which path is best depends on a taxpayer’s situation and the number of available solutions. 

Lastly, we provide all the tools needed to navigate the swamp with the least amount of effort.  These resources include sample letters, applications, and other materials; documentation creation software; assess to experts; research libraries and background sources; and even reminder emails about upcoming deadlines.  We’ve basically provided all the workflow management resources you’d want and put them at your disposal.  These aids come together in convenient, individual workspaces on our website which makes it much easier to organize and resolve even difficult cases.  The goals, paths and tools are continually updated for changing tax laws and regulations. 

As one tax professional recently exclaimed when told about TaxLifeboat.com, “Where have you been?!”

Uncovering “Tax Mills”

We’ve spoken quite a bit about the dark world of “tax mills” here on this blog and elsewhere in our outbound communications, for good reason — we don’t believe in taking advantage of those who need help the most.

We’re also in the early pre-launch phase and are looking for the right kinds of tax professionals to partner with, so we’re doing a lot of exploring — spelunking on Google, digging into qualified associations like the NAEA, and talking to a lot of people in the tax world.

Every once in a while, we come across an innocent enough sounding company name, and then the third natural search result links to a site like The Ripoff Report. This gives us pause. Particularly when there are ten to fifteen pages of links to complaints for a given tax provider.

I don’t know how often tax professionals like yourselves come across such companies in your daily lives, but of the many conversations I’ve had, most have a story or two (or ten) to tell. “Yes, I had this client who came to me two years ago… wanted “pennies on the dollar” for his $10,000 tax bill… I told him to pay the tax and get on with life, but he went to one of The Usual Suspects… he came back last month and still owes the tax bill plus penalties… and is out $10,000 extra for what he paid them…”

The age of social media makes uncovering shady companies a lot easier. Citizen Marketers aren’t shy about fingering people who have dealt with them poorly. The tools are out there (and easily found through a quick search on the engine of your choice).

How We Got Here

Hi, I’m Tom Evans, President of TaxLifeboat.com.  TaxLifeboat is an expert knowledge website created to help taxpayers who are having trouble with the IRS.  We do this, in part, by partnering with tax professionals.  In simple terms, our website provides the tools to diagnose a tax problem, identify the most promising solutions and supply the user with all the resources to implement those solutions.  We’ve automated one of the most time-consuming, least-rewarding tasks that tax professionals face so they can either 1) recommend clients with this problem to us with confidence or 2) take on such cases themselves knowing we’ve done the research and assembled the materials for them.

That’s the service side of what we do.  There’s also a human side.  My business background and training includes systems analysis, decision theory, strategic planning, financial analysis, computer modeling, well you get the idea.  Note there’s an important word missing: Tax.  Yes, I’m president and I’m not a tax professional.  So how did I get here?  The answer is that some years ago I invested my time and money into a startup company.  Things didn’t go as we had expected which put me behind in my taxes and in trouble with the IRS.

I consulted with a tax professional, Terry Guy (now my current partner), on how to resolve the problem.  He explained about the Offer in Compromise program and soon I created a software analysis of how to qualify for it.  Terry mentioned that others could use this and about a year later I published a book and software program on OIC (see Amazon.com for Happy About Tax Relief, The Offer in Compromise Solution). 

In doing the research for the book I read many books and talked to numerous professionals about resolving tax problems.  I came to realize that there were many potential solutions, not just OIC.  I also concluded that taxpayers caught in this problem had very few good alternatives to seek help.  The “tax mills” were more interested in their fees than really helping the client.  Tax professionals (mostly) didn’t want the cases because they didn’t do enough of them to become proficient and, therefore, save time and lower the cost to their clients.  Likewise the IRS was of little help and one would have to read a lot of books just to find the one solution that would fit their situation.

So that’s why we started Tax Lifeboat and how we got here.  I’m proud to say that all the assistance we provide on the website to fully resolve a person’s tax problem costs less than one hour’s time with a tax attorney.  Yes, the full price is $199 and there are discounts for tax professionals who use our tools to help their clients.  Check it out at www.TaxLifeboat.com.