In this week’s podcast, Eric discusses why those tax rep clients are pure gold, and how you should consider these cases to save the client, elevate your practice and help all of us tax paying citizens! Join us in Vegas!
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Listen to the podcast here
The Tax Rep Client: Ugly Step-Sister Or Pure Gold? By Tax Rep Network
I’m Eric Green, partner at Green & Sklarz, a boutique tax law firm, and founder of the tax resolution training organization Tax Rep LLC. Welcome to another edition of the Tax Rep Network. I want to thank our sponsors, Tax Help Software and CallEnQ. We’ve only taken sponsors of products that we use at Green & Sklarz. CallEnQ is what allows us to call the government and get into the IRS in under three minutes.
Tax Help Software is what we use for transcripts. It’s our intelligent ordering, where we track what’s going on with our clients overnight. In the morning, we know of anything that’s happened on the IRS side and also what we use for our resolution forms, our offers, installment agreements, uncollectible powers of attorney, all of that. Our sponsors have special offers for you. If you want to check them out, go to TaxRepLLC.com resources and the TRN podcast page to view the sponsor offers. Enjoy the episode.
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Tax Rep Clients: Ugly Stepsister Or Pure Gold?
Everyone, thanks for joining me for this week’s episode. I wanted to talk about this concept of whether the tax rep client is the ugly stepsister or pure gold. I wanted to talk about this because I’ve noticed these two schools of thought. Many accountants and many accounting firms view the tax rep client, the person who comes to them with a problem, as the ugly stepsister.
There’s something wrong with them, or if it’s one of their existing clients, they view it as a failure. This client can’t be trusted. There are lots of people in America. Let’s talk about my clients. My clients run the gamut. I have some people at one end who are criminals. They’re criminal tax cases. They cheated, they knew what they were doing, and now we’re trying to minimize the damage.
At the other end, I have people who have had horrific things happen to them, things that I would not wish on anyone. We’re trying to help them get out from under the weight of it and move on with their life. This idea that somehow a tax rep client falls into one bucket or another is not accurate. You take people the way you find them. Some people come in broken. Some people come in who are evil, and then there’s every kind of stripe, color, and flavor in between.
The idea is that if you’re sitting there thinking, “Do I want these people as clients?” I’m telling you, there’s a lot of money to be made helping these people. By the way, on that note, let me mention the criminal client. There’s an old running joke. It was on a bunch of TV shows. It’s been around forever. They mentioned it to me when I was in law school.
It goes like this. What do you do with the client that’s guilty? You know he’s guilty. We know they’re guilty. They know they’re guilty. The government knows they’re guilty. The argument is we’re going to go. We’re going to fight for this client. If we win, we’re heroes. We grab victory from the jaws of defeat. If we lose, the scumbag goes to prison. Either way, it’s a win-win.
I don’t generally view these people as scumbags. I’ve had a couple, don’t get me wrong, who are truly evil. Even my criminal clients usually got caught up in something, and they never thought of it as a crime. “Everyone understates their income. Everyone overstates their expenses. Everyone deals in a little bit of cash.” They never seriously thought it was a crime.
Everyone understates their income and overstates their expenses. No one considers it a crime until they are the target of an investigation. Share on XAll of a sudden, they’re the target of an investigation. What I’m getting from them is, “They don’t prosecute people for this, do they?” “Yes, they do. You’re about to become one of them.” It’s famous people. It’s Wesley Snipes. It’s Leona Helmsley. No. It’s landscapers and restaurant owners and accountants and people that they know. The IRS knows they are everyday people.
When those folks get prosecuted and all that stuff hits the papers and the government’s going to make sure that it does, there’s a collateral impact in the community. Should I not work with these people because they’ve made a mistake? The truth is that’s the way I’ve always viewed it. These are folks that have made a mistake. They miscalculated. They did something stupid.
Again, I didn’t tell them to do it. I didn’t create the disaster. I’m here to help clean up the mess. If you can get past the fact that you’re dealing with someone that has had bad things happen to them, or did something stupid, or lived a life that they couldn’t afford, and now they’re in debt and they haven’t paid their taxes, if you can get past that, these folks are pure gold. They’re pure gold for a number of reasons.
How To Make Good Use Of Tax Rep Clients
First of all, there’s a lot of opportunity. One is, on a personal level, you’re about to change somebody’s life. You’re going to change their life. By the way, change the fortunes of their kids and grandkids and whatever else. If you can get them righted and get this sorted out, you’re not only helping the taxpayer. Remember, you’re also helping the rest of us and the government.
The IRS doesn’t take offers because they’re warm and fuzzy. They take offers because, at some point, you can’t collect. These people have liens and levies. This has to end at some point. It’s like bankruptcy, we have bankruptcy for a reason. Otherwise, we’d have debtor’s prison. That’s not good for society, and it’s not good for the people involved. You have to give people an opportunity to get back up off the ground, rise again, and go on. Our society needs it, and they need it.
There’s an opportunity to help someone and help all of us by doing this. Two, you’re going to make way more money than you can do in 1040 returns. This is a premium service. It requires a premium fee. When you’ve heard me say “Add $100,000 to your bottom line doing representation,” that’s not something we just pulled out and you throw or banter around willy-nilly.
If you can get somewhere between 6 and 12 clients a year, you can add $100,000 doing IRS representation. I’m not joking. I think, honestly, it’s why we have the growth in Tax Rep that we do. When we started for the first couple of years, it was 20 or 30 people. We’re crossing over the 400 threshold.
It’s become a real, active community, as well as a forum. We’ve added a third live conference. We’re going to be in Las Vegas doing two days of training, an actual workshop, roll up your sleeves, let’s dive into it, and walk through how we do it. If you want to join us on December 13th and 14th in Las Vegas, we will be at the Suncoast Hotel and Casino.
There’s a business opportunity. There’s the opportunity to help the individual. There’s an opportunity to help your country, meaning the government and all of the taxpayers who are part of it. There’s an opportunity to prove your expertise. What I mean by that is most of my members report back they helped this client. Not only does that client remain a client forever because you’re the man or woman who saved them, but other people are attracted to you. Here’s why.
I don’t think I’ll ever have a problem. I hope I never have a problem, but if I have a problem, my CPA knows how to do this. My EA, I know she knows how to do this. She’s a member of Tax Rep. Her website talks about how she does this. She has cases where she’s compromised debts and got penalty abatement. I hope I never need that, but if I do, I’m in the right place.
We get a lot of clients here at our firm. We do tax resolution. There are other firms that do that, but we do a lot of litigation, civil and criminal, with the government. A lot of our clients will say, “I’ve interviewed three people, but you guys do this.” We won a whole bunch of cases in 2019 and 2020 in tax court and federal district court.
The Kauffman case on the FBAR penalty, and the Anna Keeve case on the rewards points in tax court. We got the $800,000 in penalties abated for one of our clients on the foreign forms. We’re on a bit of a winning streak, quite frankly, at this moment. Clients see that stuff. We put it out there when we have the win. What we hear back is, I hope we don’t end up having to litigate this, but if we do, I know I have the right people to do it.
It’s the same way on the accounting side. By doing representation, you will attract other forms of business into the firm, bookkeeping, accounting, tax return, and tax planning. If you do financial planning, the reason is they know that they’ve got a warrior, in the tax world sense, in you. For those of you who are sitting and saying, “Do I want these representation clients?” Yes, you do. If you don’t, in my mind, you’re not thinking about this clearly.
By doing legal representation, you will attract other form of business into the law firm. Share on XIt’s not just the money to be made helping this person, but you have to think about it this way. You’re helping them. You’re helping all of us by getting them straightened out and in compliance going forward. You’re going to make more money, and you’re also going to elevate your entire practice. By doing this, by making it known that you can handle these matters, you can handle the good, the bad, and the ugly, anybody wants to be with your firm doing their stuff.
This week’s lesson, if you’re considering tax resolution, you want to do this. If your concern is, “Do I want to work with these people?” Yes. You don’t have to work with everybody. We turn people down. If people come in here and they don’t want to be helped, meaning they sort of, but not really, or we talk to them, “Do you have the tax returns done?” “I can get them done.” “You’ll have the backup for it.” “Do I need that? If necessary, I can generate it, wink, wink.” No, you don’t understand something. That’s a client we don’t want.
For most people, that’s not the game that they play. Most of these people come in and they want help. What happens is they get overwhelmed, and they’re overwhelmed and they don’t know what to do. The IRS, by the way, they’re not helpful. It’s not like a revenue officer calls and says, “Here’s what you got to do. Let’s get you into compliance. I’ll give you 30 days, to get these tax returns done. Once you get those to me, now we’re in compliance. We can move on. Maybe you’re an offer candidate.” No, they don’t. They sit there, and they threaten.
All the taxpayers are doing is simply reacting, and it’s confusing, chaotic, and frightening. What you’re going to do is cut through all that. You’re going to explain the process. Most clients will sleep better after the consultation with you. That’s why we charge for consults. They’re going to sleep better knowing they’ve met you. You’ve explained the process. It’s not as chaotic and nutty as they thought. They have a game plan.
Most clients will sleep better just after one consultation with their lawyer. They can be comfortable knowing that they have made a game plan with you. Share on XThey may go astray on that game plan. You’ve got to ride herd on them a little bit. We have a game plan. We get the information. You get paid upfront, as we teach you. If you need those letters, they’re all in our members area, the marketing letters, as well as our retainer agreements and all of that, our checklist. It’s all there. Follow the script, get the money, walk them through the process, and follow the process. It’s not that complicated.
You will save them, you will make more money, and you are going to elevate your entire practice. Don’t worry about ugly stepsisters. Go looking for pure gold because there are as many as 25 million to 50 million of them. They’re everywhere, and they need your help. Thanks for listening in. I hope this has given those of you who are hesitant a little food for thought. We’ll talk next week. Bye-bye.
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Closing Words And Workshop Opportunity
If you haven’t already subscribed to the Tax Rep Network podcast, go to TaxRepLLC.com, mouse over resources, and click TRN podcast. You’ll get an account loaded with all the episodes, our sponsor offers, and transcripts of recent podcast episodes. Thanks for listening. Thanks again to our sponsors, CallEnQ and Tax Help Software. See you in the next episode.
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For those of you who have been asking about getting together live and doing a workshop together, we heard you, and we’re doing it. Roger Nemeth from Tax Help Software, Michelle Weinstein from the Abundant Accountant, and I, Eric Green from Tax Rep Network, are going to be doing our first Tax Rep Network Conference. It will be live, only live, at the Suncoast Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, on December 13th and 14th.
For two full days, we’re going to work through case studies together, offers and compromise, manage the cases, challenge a collection statute expiration date, go through the various installment agreements, how to complete the forms, and where to find clients and how to bill for this. Hence Michelle’s involvement in this, she is going to be talking about where to find clients and how to bill for this service.
It’s two full days. There are a handful of seats left. The early bird is still going on. I’ll put the link down below, but you can go to TaxRepLLC.com, and go to the events page. The last one at the bottom is the Tax Rep Network Conference. We’re going to have two great days in Vegas. We’re going to learn a lot, we’re going to have skills to go back and make some money at your firm, and we’ll have a lot of fun too. Go ahead, join us, click on the link, and we’ll see you in Vegas.
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