In this week’s podcast, Eric Green catches up with Roger Nemeth from Tax Help Software to discuss the changes in transcript downloads, how practitioners can use this to manage not only their cases but turn it into an annuity stream. In addition, Eric and Roger discuss the upcoming Tax Rep Conference in Las Vegas on December 13th and 14th.
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Listen to the podcast here
Transcripts And Transcript Monitoring With Roger Nemeth By Tax Rep Network
Thanks for tuning into this episode of the show. Joining me is Roger Nemeth from Tax Help Software. Roger, thanks for taking the time to do this.
I love doing these.
I thought we’d get Roger back because we have a lot going on. Tax Mentor is growing. I want to talk about that. The adjustments to the Tax Help Software program, I want to talk about that. Roger and I will be doing a two-day workshop in Las Vegas if you’re interested. There are a handful of seats left for that. That is December 13th and 14th at the Suncoast. There is a lot going on. If you can, tell people what Tax Mentor is.
Introducing Tax Mentor: A New Resource For Onboarding And Case Analysis
Let me start with Tax Help Software. Tax Help Software is the transcript software that’s been around for over ten years. It created a new software category that hadn’t existed before, which is the analysis of IRS transcripts that had never been done before. Pursuant to that, I became a subject matter expert on a lot of internal e-service kinds of things and the onboarding process with transcripts.
Over time, I started to educate people and I would speak for various organizations out there. In 2023, it became apparent that I was doing as much speaking as I was developing. The problem you get into when you run a company is you hate to lump 20 different things under 1 entity. I spun up Tax Mentor and looked for a partner who had time. What I wanted was to focus on our education on our own.
I was speaking for a lot of different people. I was surprised to find out how little a lot of speakers go out and speak and travel the country. It wasn’t so much that I was looking for money, but it was our next phase of the business to start doing something organized and stick to our space, which is onboarding through the 433 process. I didn’t want to go beyond that. I have some collections experience but my core competency has always been the transcripts, onboarding, process, and procedures. That’s where we’re staying with.
I found Catharine O’Connor who is a tax attorney I started working with at one of the big resolution companies. She was new. They were incorporating my software. She is one of the very first users of Tax Help Software, the software product, and has probably evaluated more cases through it than any person on the planet. There may be a couple of others out there that have done more. She specialized in high volume and payroll cases. She agreed to come on and partner with me with Tax Mentor. The way we see Tax Mentor is a supplement to memberships like Eric offers. I would speak for Eric and I would always speak on transcripts. Eric knows transcripts, but Eric’s talents lie in optimizing a case.
I know enough about transcripts to be dangerous. What happens is we do get members that say, “Eric, what about this code? What does this mean?” or, “I got the Tax Help Software report and I need help understanding what exactly has gone on.” Normally, I would send it to you and say, “Roger, what’s going on with this?” The general public doesn’t get to do that. Tax Mentor closes that gap.
Pursuant to the education that we’re doing through Tax Mentor, the event in Las Vegas that we’ve partnered with Eric on, and some of the other things, what we realized was the reports are very detailed but people wanted to know what to do with that information, whether they’re new to the industry or they’re seeing something that might be more complicated than they expected.
What Tax Mentor has done is taken the Tax Help Software report and we offer an enhanced consultation report. We don’t always look at the same case. Sometimes, it’s in one of our wheelhouses and not the other. By the majority, Catharine is the one doing this. We analyze that report for you and return to you the game plan of how we would work the case and what we see in the report. We call it a consultation report.
The way it works is you download the transcripts through whatever method you want. Most people use Tax Help Software but it will work any way you get transcripts on your computer. You then upload them to us. Prior to the upload on your computer, you answer a quick interview about the assets and values of the house through Zillow. It’s a neat little automated process. It extracts all the personal information from the transcripts and uploads it to us at Tax Mentor.
We don’t care what somebody’s name is. We look at the data and say, “This is how we would handle this case.” We give you a collectability score and say, “It doesn’t look like this person’s an OIC candidate because they’ve got $200,000 of equity and some retirement funds.” It’s that next step of, “How should I work the case?”
People have jumped on board. We’ve got a couple of larger entities with payroll costs going through the roof. It is hard to hire an enrolled agent to do your onboarding. You’re looking at some places at $60,000, $70,000, or $80,000 for a newer enrolled agent in some parts of the country. What we’re finding is people are starting to come to us and looking at us to do their onboarding for them. They would have an employee that gets the transcripts, gets the power of attorney or 8821, and then let us do the onboard analysis at a price point that’s less than $50 per consultation. That’s taken off at this point.
We’ve got some neat automation coming up where if Eric calls me and says, “I want to do a case study for my members on an OIC with a 433D or whatever he’s working on,” I would be able to go into our library, find one that’s already redacted, and hand him real transcripts to train on. That’s what we’re evolving into. A lot of people who do a lot of training use the same 6 or 7 cases for a decade.
Where we’re taking it to the next level is every time I do something, you may see some core competency classes. “I have one 433 that we’re going to be doing next year that I’ve done in the past. I call it the kitchen sink 433 where every field on a 433-OIC is completed.” That’s not a real case. That’s a way to show you how you put in life insurance policies and things like that. It’s taking it to the next level. With payroll going through the roof, this is going to be the next way to do tax resolution.
The Power Of Tax Mentor And Tax Rep App: A Comprehensive Solution
It does a number of things. One is it covers that gap in the run-up to where Tax Rep Network takes over. What we’re doing is we’re doing the consult on the 433, the negotiation, the appeal of the offer, and all that stuff. We don’t tend to dive into the onboarding and transcript stuff. We use Tax Help Software, get the information, and then run with it. You’ve got Tax Mentor closing that gap.
On the marketing side, we rolled out the Tax Rep app, which automates a drip campaign anytime you get a lead. We’ve created a survey where you can send out a survey even through social media and get people to say, “Here is what I think the biggest issue is, and here’s what I think the best way to resolve it is.” From those leads, you effectively begin a drip campaign that’s automated. You don’t need staff to do that. You don’t need anyone else to do that. You can then continue and close those people. The world for tax resolution professionals is getting more manageable because finding good people with the overhead is expensive.
I’ll throw one other thing out there. I’ve got all ten of the largest resolution companies using us. Some of the biggest software names out there use us. We’re out there and integrated into society. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened where we’ve talked to somebody at a medium-sized office who’s an employee and they use our product. They’re the ones using it day-to-day. They’re the person at the office doing the brunt of the work.
Their name’s not on the door, but all of a sudden, we’ll get a call from the boss going, “John Smith’s no longer with us.” At the same time the following day, I’ll get a call from John Smith going, “I need my own Tax Help Software license. I’m no longer with my CPA firm or my EA firm.” People are realizing that when they get to a certain level of competence, they are going out on their own. The future of this industry, as Eric said with marketing, is going to be fewer employees and more automated processes in the resolution space. That’s where this is heading. It’s got to be streamlined.
The future of this industry is less employees and more automated processes in the resolution space. That's where this is heading. Share on XIn Tallahassee, we have an Amazon warehouse being built. I interviewed a college kid and said, “I’ll match whatever you’re making.” He worked at Bass Pro Shops. Bass Pro Shops is paying a part-time college kid $15.50 an hour in Tallahassee. I know what everybody’s thinking. They’re like, “That’s the way wages are. They’ve been undervalued.” I’m sorry, we didn’t go from $7 to $8 for a college kid working a part-time job to almost $30,000 a year with very little training and anything like that. It’s the new dynamic. The entry-level jobs are pushing the wages up. To be profitable, you have to automate.
Here’s what’s going to happen. I don’t want to get political, but we can keep upping that minimum. What it does is it’s going to force companies to automate. I went to a conference at NYU. It was called The Future State of the Digital Workforce. They were arguing that the world is going to become linked. This is already happening.
Platinum Tax Rep is a mastermind group for six months. It’s not like a different real level of membership. This is the mastermind group. A number of my Platinum Tax Rep members have grown to the point where they’re like, “I can’t find people.” I said, “Go out into the forum and say, “Tax Rep members, does anyone have the capacity to help me?” and they did. They’re getting the work done with other members.
Are we going to get to the point where I can automate with Tax Mentor the transcript analysis? I can automate the marketing effort through the app. I can bring to bear as much workforce as I need through the network. I can go out and there are 400 professionals I’ve trained who do this all over the country and all over the world. We have two people in France. We have one in Australia. I have one in Guam. We can go out and find people who can do the work.
The argument is, “Why do I need a 9,500-square-foot office? Why do I need all the overhead? Why do I need the employees? Are we going to become a world of independent contractors?” I had Joe Woodard on the show. You know Joe. We were talking about the automation of bookkeeping that Intuit was rolling out.
He was telling me, “Certified bookkeepers are all freaking out. They’re competing with us.” I said to Joe, “They’re not competing with you. You can automate and say, “Rather than doing 30 clients, I can do 300 clients with the staff that I have.” Either you could reduce your staff or you could punch above your weight because of the automation. You could automate the bookkeeping so instead of a bookkeeper having to do the books, you had 1 bookkeeper reviewing 10 sets of books. You can escalate your business vertically. You can increase your business dramatically or exponentially because of automation.”
You become a monitor of processes as opposed to a doer. Anybody can type data into something.
What I ended up becoming as I trained my staff is more of a marketer. I represent the clients at hearings and other stuff but a big chunk of my time is spent on marketing and bringing in those leads for the firm to keep 23 people busy versus where I would sit in my office, grind away, and try to get my marketing done at night and on the weekends. You’re right. It’s flipped because I can get way more done.
Remember, when I started, you weren’t around doing Tax Help Software. Tax Help Software is new. Before then, I used to do this stuff by hand. We’d get the transcripts and I’d put it in Excel and do it year by year, flowing it out in Excel to figure out when these years would start dropping off. You fixed all that. What is new with the software? I know you’ve been working a lot on the CSET stuff.
I’ll throw the first major project out and then step into the CSETs, which was a game-changer but was a little bit easier to do. We’ve been working on our CP2000 comparison tool, which compares the wage and income to the return transcript. We can give you CP2000 results up to a year before the IRS does the comparison. It will eliminate the problem that will exist later. You can eliminate penalties by monitoring.
What we’ve started to upgrade is to go to the next level. We’ve had a list of false positives where it has been hard to see the flow. We’re never going to be able to detect every under-reporter scenario automated because of the way the IRS flows the forms. Cancellation of debt is one that we have to pop up and say, “If they’re not insolvent or have filled out the insolvency worksheet, it is because it’s not on the transcript.” It’s, “It’s under-reported. You still need to do a little bit more investigation.” It has been a wonderful addition.
One of the big New York firms had bought us. During the pilot, we discovered $1.5 million of under-reported income. They all thought it was an error. Finally, somebody said, “Let’s call the client.” The client’s response was, “Was that taxable?” It was taxable. I don’t know what it was specifically, but it popped up. They saved them over $100,000 in penalties and interest.
For people reading this, what Roger is talking about is when you file the return and it hits the system, the software can then say, “There’s a mismatch here.” The IRS system will eventually do that. If you catch that and do a qualified amended return where you amend the return before the IRS contacts you, you avoid the penalties. An accuracy penalty of 20% is big.
A caveat on that, depending on how late it’s filed, there might still be a little bit of a failure to file and possibly a failure to pay. They’re 0.5% per month. If you catch it within a month, it’s minuscule. The accuracy-related one is the one that you’ll save most of the time on. If you self-report it, the challenge is, “It was a mistake. We picked it up during standard operating procedures and fixed it.” It’s been this wonderful tool. What we’re basically doing is going into the next region where we’re not just reactive to tax problems, but we’re getting into the preventative phase of post-filing compliance.
We're not just reactive to tax problems. We're now getting into the preventive phase of post-filing compliance. Share on XTurning Tax Monitoring Into A Profit Machine
That’s how we’ve created an annuity stream. A couple of years ago, what would happen is when we close a case, we are revoking the power of attorney. We’re like, “I’m done. I don’t want to sit and babysit the case, get the junk mail, and have to chase someone down.” For those reading who have never done this, what happens when you revoke the power of attorney is they get a letter. The letter says, “Eric Green has revoked their power of attorney and is no longer representing you.” Clients flip out. They start calling the firm saying, “Don’t fire me.” I’m like, “We’re not firing you, but I’m not going to sit and babysit this.”
We had a client say, “How much would it cost to keep it on file?” I said, “$500.” We got a new power of attorney, which you can go out three years past where we are, and submitted it. Due to intelligent ordering through Tax Help Software where every night we get an update on anything that’s changed, we started monitoring. It was my assistant that said, “Should we offer this to everybody?” Three years from now, you’ve got 150 people paying me $500 a year. That’s a free $75,000 for the firm.
You are not the only one doing that. That has become a huge revenue source. You don’t say, “I’m going to handle the problem as part of that $500.” It’s just the monitoring. I will throw this out about intelligent ordering. Intelligent ordering has outlived its usefulness in its old format. This is an important change. I always overlooked it because it was a technology piece.
For years, Tax Help Software could download 1 transcript every 15 seconds. It was a restriction that the IRS had. It was an old system. We were lucky to have people log in and maybe get 12,000 to 15,000 transcripts in a 24-hour period. The software would run overnight. It would sometimes run over the weekend, but then they shut the system down on the weekend and it would fail. You’d only have some of the transcripts you requested.
Intelligent ordering was made so the program would go through and say, “You’re requesting a quarter million transcripts. Which ones haven’t been ordered in the past week?” It would order everything that hadn’t been ordered in the past week. The next day, it would say, “Which ones haven’t been ordered in the past week?” You didn’t have to go through each client to figure out what needed to be pulled. It would do it for you and eventually load the balance over a week. We would tell people, depending on the number of clients, “Run it a minimum of 3 times a week up to 5 times a week if you’re running a quarter million every week.”
One of the other transcript companies out there was like, “Only a handful of people got this.” I’ll throw it out. Canopy Tax was like, “We’re an exclusive provider. Few people do this.” First off, we were the first ones invited into the program because we are the largest transcript downloader and the IRS knows that. For a point of comparison, when the new API launched, Canopy was doing thousands a day and our clients were doing a million a day. It’s an estimate. The IRS has provided some statistics to us.
The capacity has increased with the new API. It was advertised by one of our competitors that they were exclusive and there were a couple of other people invited. We’re definitely part of that process. Tax Help Software was the first one invited in because the IRS knows we’re the largest. They can track how many transcripts were going through each one of these entities.
The new API has an unknown capacity limit. I know there’s a limit on how many you can get per hour but I haven’t been able to get there. What it means is Tax Help Software and the rest of everybody went from about 12,000 in a 24-hour period to anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 in one hour. Let’s say you have 500 power of attorneys or 8821s on clients and have never used the software before. In a couple of hours, you could go through and download every transcript for all those people.
Pursuant to that, we started to improve our report process. It used to take 30 seconds to process the data and create a report for each client. We’re soon going to launch an update where that will take about 4 to 6 seconds per client to import the data. We’re trying to get the reports as fast as the transcripts. As we go into the end of 2021, you’re going to see the ability to pull upwards of a million transcripts a day and have the reports all in one day.
Seamless Client Onboarding: Mastering Tax Mentor Tools
For people reading this, so you understand, we have Tax Help Software. My assistant can come in in the morning, log in, and update. Let’s say we have 1,000 clients in there. Within a few hours, it will update everything and then give us almost a dashboard report of the clients who’ve had something change. That’s how we monitor.
I can then contact those clients and say, “You were uncollectible. You’re back in collection. We need a $2,500 retainer and we’ll get started working on a new 433 for you,” or, “They’re saying that you defaulted your offer. What the heck happened?” or, “You’ve been flagged for an audit.” Monitoring is what we’re doing. I agree. We’ve never agreed to, “We’ll solve the problem.” We’re just monitoring for $500. The sky’s the limit. I don’t think we’ve had a client who does not want to be monitored. When we get to the end and they’re relieved, usually, they’re like, “$500? No problem. It’s a no-brainer.”
If anybody has ever seen the retail tax or worked in retail tax, there are these audit protection plans. I don’t think they use the word representation.
They don’t.
I have had people that work for these and they are mills. They contract out to people. This is how crazy it gets. Those companies will not allow their contractors to use Tax Help Software because they say, “We haven’t vetted it and we don’t know if it’s secure.” That’s the first step. I don’t have a problem with that. That’s up to them. The program is 100% secure. It’s no less secure than if you go and use a web browser.
My problem with that entire industry is this. They send an enrolled agent or CPA to attend the audit with you. They are specifically not there to represent. These companies have told some of the contractors, “You are not representing. You are merely going to explain the process to them.” It, to me, is such a scam. There’s no other way to put it. If I were called to testify in front of Congress and they asked my opinion, I would be like, “This is 100% a scam.”
What I’m trying to get to with this is your audit detection product, you’re offering it for a similar price, maybe a little bit more or maybe a little bit less than some of these retail products. It’s not just retail tax firms doing this. With any of the third-party programs, you can order a protection package. Start looking at the details of what they do.
I’ve had real people doing these things. I’m like, “That’s an easy one. Do the first-time abatement,” and they’re like, “We can’t do that. We can’t render advice.” “We’re basically monitoring a car crash,” is how it has been described to me. What’s happening is you can’t justify your expenses. They think you’re supposed to help defend them, and that’s not the case. I have this huge, horrible feeling about that whole thing because it is falsely representative.
I know somebody who does that. He’s an EA. That’s what he does. He has become one of my best referral sources because when he gets these cases, he tells the client, “I’m not there to represent you. I’m only there to guide you through this. Looking at what you have, you need to be represented.” He must have referred us to twelve cases. He said usually, the clients are like, “What did I pay for?” He’s like, “You paid for me just to come and consult, but you’re going to have some issues here. You need someone who can represent you and we can’t do it.”
Not even consult. “I’m here to explain the process to you,” is how they say it. They can’t even generate a letter that says, “These expenses are true and correct per the following case law or this position.” Standard letters that we should all have in our inventory, they’re not allowed to even do. I don’t know how people get away with a Circular 230 because I could not sit in an audit, let somebody do something wrong, and still keep my credentials as far as I’m aware. It bothers me.
I agree. For those of you who are reading, if you haven’t tried Tax Help Software, you can go check it out. It is the cornerstone of our practice. It does the intelligent ordering, the transcripts, as well as our offers in compromise. It does our 433s. It’s how we do what we do. It’s TaxHelpSoftware.com.
Let me make sure they get the newer link because we have a new website. Not that the offer changed, but this page we’re keeping updated. It’s TaxHelpSoftware.com/TRN. It’s $250 for new users. If you’re an existing user, we have a renewal discount. It’s $250 for 6 months of a fully loaded executive license with a 45-day Tax Mentor trial, which is the twice-monthly case consultation meetings and open Q&A. You also get three consultations with that. They’re not over-the-phone consultations. We don’t do a consultation like Eric. We do the consultation reports. You have a roadmap to the case once you’ve uploaded it to us.
What we found is if you’re going to do one of your Tax Rep Network consultations with Eric, if you show up and have the Tax Mentor case report, you and Eric aren’t talking about, “What does the transcript say?” Your fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes, or however long the consultation is, is about how to handle the case. All the ready work has been done. The CSEDs are there. Should you challenge the CSEDs? Is there a possibility of criminal? What are the collectability options? It’s all going to be at Eric’s fingertips.
Eric is then going to be able to render his opinion. It gets to where Eric’s staff has given him a real case and you’re spending your time on the meat and potatoes. We’ve had so many people call us about different consultation products and it was always the same thing. They were like, “All I ended up ever doing is talking about the transcripts. We never get to the meat and potatoes of the case because the consultation was only twenty minutes.” You want to spend time with Eric’s consultations.
First of all, it’s not 30 minutes. It’s however long it takes. The thing about Tax Rep is we’re all in. You don’t pay for anything else. The books are all part of the membership. It’s the same with the consult. People will ask me, “How many consults do I get?” I’m like, “As many as you need.” They’re like, “How long are they?” I’m like, “As long as it takes.”
We have one. It’s a highly complicated offer that one of my folks is doing in Colorado. She and I have spoken on the phone three times. The thing is, we’re there. The reason to join Tax Rep is you’re not out hanging and doing this by yourself. You’ve got people behind you who can help you. We’ve seen it. We’ve done it. We have sample letters. We have all that stuff.
Could you build your own practice and figure it out on your own? Absolutely. I did many years ago. If we can shortcut that to get you to where you need to be and you need a certain type of letter, we’ve got it. We’ve already been there. We’ve done this. We’re like, “This is a penalty abatement letter that works. This is our hobby loss letter that kicks ass.” We’ve got all that.
If you can come in with the Tax Mentor report, then we can talk about, “In light of what the report is showing, here’s the best strategy. Here’s what we would do.” You can go do it. When you have questions, you come back and say, “Here’s where I am. Do you agree?” or, “What about this?” There’s no extra fee. Book a time. Let’s get on a Zoom or a phone call. If I can answer it quickly through email, you’ll probably get it within an hour. What they both do is help with the case. Tax Mentor brings them up through the analysis and the onboarding. We’re then going to take it and run it through resolution.
There are four phases to a case. One is getting the lead and converting it to onboarding. That’s probably the most important step in this process. I hear from people all the time who are like, “I paid somebody $20,000 to learn how to get cases but I was never able to get the case,” or, “I got cases but now I don’t know what to do with them.” It’s that chicken-egg problem of getting the lead and getting the sale. Eric will help you with that.
Next is the onboarding process. That’s the Power of Attorney, the 8821, or whichever route you decide to go. You get the data and accumulate the data. In this phase, I always include the analysis. It’s not just getting the data but analyzing and coming up with a strategy. The third is the resolution step. It’s lead-to-sale, onboarding, and then resolution. Where Eric is focused and should be focused with his talents is in the, “How do we handle this case?”
The final phase everybody doesn’t realize there’s revenue opportunity is the end of the case. Maybe the person bailed on you. Maybe they lied to you and you’ve got to end the resolution. Those need to be done cleanly and correctly. Eric teaches you that. What do you do with somebody with a successful resolution? What do you do with the guy that’s been non-compliant for ten years and you get them compliant? He’s a revenue opportunity.
What do you do with someone with successful resolution? What do you do with the guy that's been not compliant for 10 years? You get them compliant. He's a revenue opportunity. Share on XIf you’re somebody that does tax returns, you say, “You’re in an offer. In order for me to do this offer, I’m going to charge you either a monthly fee over the next three years or a one-time fee. Do whatever you want to do but I have to do your next 3 tax returns or next 5 tax returns depending on how much time is left on the CSED.” An OIC can close out earlier than five years if the CSED is less. That’s a little-known fact. It’s those little nuances out there. What it focuses on is generating revenue post-case. Don’t do an offer unless you’ve rigged it up but also case monitoring.
What we found is we were monitoring for free. All of a sudden, I was like, “Why aren’t we getting paid for this?” That client said, “How much would it cost?” I was also like, “That’s interesting.” I did an episode on this. This was years ago. I had a client. It’s a steel company. We ended up negotiating a payment plan and got it all done.
Six months later, we got all the default notices. The default notices come back. I called the client and they were like, “We filed and paid one day late. We’ve already paid the penalty and the interest. Put us back in the agreement.” I called ACS and they said, “It’s going back out to the field.” I called the revenue officer who had it before and he said, “It’s going to be back in his inventory. He doesn’t have it yet. He won’t set them back up. We have to start all over again.”
I’m walking around the office and shouting, “Stupid clients.” Bob Percy, who’s deceased, came out and said, “Eric, we love stupid people. Stupid people are going to pay for your three daughters’ weddings. They’re going to fund your second home. They’re going to fund your retirement. Don’t think about them as stupid people. Think of them as walking annuities.”
That’s what they are. There are people that Bob helped multiple times that I’ve helped multiple times. Amanda is on her second round with this guy. They keep coming back. What the monitoring does effectively is, in many ways, it keeps them. We’re monitoring them. When they have a problem, they come to us. People think of this resolution as a one-off thing. It’s not. If it goes well, you have a relationship probably for life with some of these people.
People don’t go from not filing for ten years and being a procrastinator to, “I’m back to normal.” How many of us are like, “After New Year’s Day, I’m going to go on a diet.” How many of us stick with those diets? It’s the same thing. It’s like, “I’m back above normal. I can breathe again. I’m not filing my taxes. I’m caught back up. I have another five years before they come after me.” The problem is, the second time around, they’re much faster.
Inside Tax Court: Real Lessons From Pro Se Cases
Time is going to run short. I do want to talk about Vegas. If you’re interested, there are about 25 seats left in the room. It is December 13th and 14th. It’s two full days. We are going to go from start to finish. We agreed that we’re doing this as a workshop. We’re doing it case-based versus Eric Green and Roger going to take turns lecturing.
Also joining us on the second day is going to be Michelle Weinstein from The Abundant Accountant known as The Pitch Queen. Michelle is going to be doing a bit on how to maximize what you’re getting paid and how to close the deal. It’s going to be a fun two days. For those of you looking for your CPE, you’ll earn sixteen CPE credits. It is at the Suncoast, which I know is off-strip. It’s beautiful. It was redone a couple of years ago. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it.
I’m looking forward to it. Bill Nemeth, my father, is going to show up. It’s a case study. If you see my father’s pro se tax court and how that process works, he is going to talk about real cases he’s been involved in where the client filed pro se and non-attorneys were able to negotiate with appeals.
He’s got a class that’s out there that he offered. Maybe it’s CPA Academy. We may have it on our website. I don’t know if that one’s up yet. I haven’t seen it, but he does do it. He’s going to talk about the cases and how you can leverage them. If a client needs to go to tax court, they file it. This is so we’re clear. You can’t help them file their petition if you’re not an attorney or U.S. Tax Court. If they file on their own, you as an enrolled agent or a CPA can go to the appeals process. That’s where most of these are worked out. He’s going to give you examples of the results of that.
For those folks reading, if you file in tax court and you have not been to appeals, they are going to send it to appeals because the goal is to try to get it settled. You, with your 2848, can represent them at appeals. Even if they’ve been to appeals and they file in tax court pro se, IRS counsel with the 2848 will still talk to the EA and CPA because they want to get it resolved. They can’t possibly try all the cases, and they don’t want to.
If you take a $10,000 case in front of a tax court judge, my understanding is they’re like, “Why is this here?” Under a certain dollar amount, it’s like, “Why are you in front of me? Why has this not been negotiated out?” If the prosecutor is like, “We did offer $2,000 and they said, “We want zero,” the judges know this. Whether or not it’s in open court, they know, “You’re being hardheaded. You’re going to get a little punishment.”
I used to be a police officer. It’s like traffic court. If you’re going to contest it, it better be a reason and not, “I don’t think this is fair,” because he will hammer you with court fees. You pay more than the original ticket. It’s definitely a process. I’ve heard all the stories. If you haven’t, these are the little nuggets out there that are out there.
The pro se tax court process is out there and very few people touch on it. There are a lot of people who are like, “It’s practicing law without a license.” It can be, but you have to follow a set of rules. The client has to decide whether they want to file and file on their own. It’s going to be a wonderful option for your toolbox if you so choose. I’ll leave it at that.
It’s going to be two days. We’ve got Roger, Mr. Bill, me, Michelle, and Clemens who does a lot of our web work and our website. A lot of my members like using Clemens. Clemens could teach the offer class. He has listened to it for ten years. He knows this stuff. I told him, “Do you want to go get your EA?” I got to cut this off. Roger, thanks a lot for joining us. Everyone, thanks for reading. We’ll talk again soon. Hopefully, we’ll see you all in Vegas.
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