The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
EP 70 - Resolving Tax Issues w/ Michael Rozbruch
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In this insightful video, Michael Rozbruch, a CPA and certified tax resolution specialist, shares valuable strategies for building a highly profitable tax resolution practice. From overcoming career shifts to understanding crucial IRS procedures, he explains how to effectively manage tax issues and help clients get out of debt. If you’re an entrepreneur, CPA, enrolled agent, or attorney looking to grow your business through tax resolution, this video is a must-watch. Learn to take advantage of the Tax Reform Act, manage IRS notices, and develop profitable client strategies!
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Welcome to the Mark Proberg CPA podcast. I'm really excited and honored to have a specialist here and something that we haven't talked about before. And I've heard of Mike through some of our friends I know some people that have gone through his training as well and he's nationally recognized in what he does. And if you or someone you know has ever dealt with unresolved tax issues and tax debts and all sorts of challenges, there's a whole world out there of opportunities that we don't do because we specialize in tax planning, but there's all these opportunities that you can do to mitigate those back taxes, and so Mike is going to talk about what that means. What's that, what that is, what's possible, and also, if you are a CPA listening when you know oftentimes you're listening and using my ideas in your practice well, now you can talk about maybe using some of Mike's ideas as well. So let's do it, let's get into it. Michael, can you introduce yourself in 60 seconds or less?
Speaker 2:Sure, Thank you, Mark. My name is Michael Rosbrook. I'm a CPA and certified tax resolution specialist, and I help solo and entrepreneurial CPAs, enrolled agents and attorneys build highly profitable tax resolution practices, either from scratch or adding on to what they're already doing.
Speaker 1:How did you get into this?
Speaker 2:Well, I was in the corporate world for 18 years in my prior life and one day, as I got fired from a CFO job, I realized I was unemployable, that I was never, ever going to work for anybody ever again, that I was never, ever going to work for anybody ever again. And this industry the tax resolution industry was basically just being born. Then President Clinton in 1998 signed the Tax Reform and Restructuring Act, which gave teeth to a lot of IRS procedures. In other words, prior to 1998, the IRS could go into your bank account or levy your wages without prior notice. There wasn't an offer and compromise program, there wasn't really an appeals program. So all of this came into being.
Speaker 2:And one day I'm watching the televised Senate finance hearings on C-SPAN and the average American was getting up in front of the TV cameras saying how the IRS ruined their lives, padlocked their businesses, spouses dying from heart attacks, from the stress, all because they got behind the eight ball and owed the IRS. These weren't bad people. They didn't have money in the Caymans or offshore or were evading taxes. They were just good, hardworking Americans that got behind the eight ball. I made a decision I was going to help them and that's what I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we, and you know there's. You know, obviously our first line of defenses were proactive to begin with. But sometimes, you know, certain circumstances just put you in a position where it's going to be incredibly hard to pay your taxes. And we've also seen instances where the IRS has reinterpreted some of the tax law or court cases to really shift things in a different direction. And sometimes they're really unauthorized to do some of the things you do. Now you'd be surprised to find that the IRS does not write the tax law. I mean, they can issue, you know, obviously they can issue publications, but the tax law. You know they're enforcing the tax law. But a lot of times the IRS is wrong about certain stances and actions they do and they need to be put in check. And also, sometimes it's not even that the IRS is the enemy. But there are all these other opportunities out there that are just not as understandable or available to the general public on how we can deal with the IRS and our back taxes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you know. Look, when the IRS sends a taxpayer a notice for an amount due, a balance due, 71% of the time that notice is incorrect. That's one uphill battle. The other uphill battle today is that and we advise our members of this, so you know the IRS went from 79,000 full-time employees at the end of 2022 to 91,000 as of right now. Uh, they haven't been at 91,000 full-time employees in about 20 years. Uh.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing those 21,000 extra employees they hired are and I'm going to say it because it's true, are untrained and senseless. And what our members are finding is, before you could make one phone call to an agent and get done what you needed to get done. Now I'm burning it into their brain, our members, that they have to call at least three times until they get someone at the IRS who knows what they're doing. So it's very frustrating right now. Imagine the layperson trying to get anything done with the IRS. If practitioners are having a difficult time and there's a huge disconnect from the top brass at the IRS versus what's really going on in the trenches a huge disconnect. They're saying everything is great, we have all this money with the Inflation Reduction Act and we're enforcing the laws and we're collecting the money, but the rank and file really right now do not know what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is a little scary here and you know we're going through an audit right now and I'll be honest, I don't know what childhood trauma this auditor went through to motivate him to take these crazy stances on some of the depreciation elections they're trying to. What this auditor is trying to do is he's trying to pretty much rewrite the law and reinterpret things that have been. If their stances and assumptions were correct, that would mean every single cost segregation study done throughout the entire country on any single-family rental or multifamily residential rental is wrong and the result of their analysis produced a really major tax liability and we're going to have to fight it now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to give you a tip, mark. So I loved getting audit representation cases because there are three bites at the apple. So at the first level you're at right now you're dealing with either what's called a TCO, which is tax compliance officer, or a revenue agent, an RA. Most revenue agents who have your financial life in their hands are making 21 bucks an hour. That's number one. Number two they probably have never taken an intermediate accounting one-on-one course, yet they're trying to school you on depreciation.
Speaker 2:So what we normally did when we weren't seeing eye to eye with the agent, we would say go ahead and issue your 4549, which is the audit report, income tax changes. Of course we didn't have the client sign it. 45 days after that we got the statutory 90-day NOD notice, which we love to get, because then what we could do is and I did hundreds of these over a year is petition the tax court. So we would have a docketed case in tax court on this substantiation case. District counsel does not want to litigate substantiation cases, they only want to litigate law or fact cases. So district council remanded the case to appeal. At appeal it was a horse trade and I'd say 95% of our cases were settled in favor of the taxpayer when we followed that strategy. So don't fret If you're being represented, or even if you're not you want to get the case into a docketed case in tax court. You'll get what you need there.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good to hear. Yeah, we are meeting with the appeals office tomorrow morning and you know, I mean I have other mentors as well who have been helping me walk through this and they're like, well, you know, this auditor is really thorough in his analysis. I mean the guys, I mean he's really scrutinized every piece of this. And you know one key takeaway for the audience here if you're looking to minimize the probability of being under scrutiny of the IRS, here's one quick tip Hand in, report all your 1099s, give all your 1099s to your tax professional, because what triggered the audit was he didn't provide a 1099B showing a capital gain event, which was insignificant.
Speaker 2:It was like $26,000.
Speaker 1:But we did some cost checks and short-term rentals that created like maybe $400,000 of tax deductions and now every line item is being scrutinized because there's silly capital gain of it. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's a good point. Yeah yeah, you don't want to. You know you want to report all those 1099s for sure.
Speaker 1:And then we have another former client who came to us and he had his tax attorney contact us asking for, you know, some additional documents to support you know their audit. And he asked for some 1099Bs same thing and we said we don't have them because he never gave them to us and that's likely what triggered his audit as well. Actually, I talked to him, that's what it was. So it's like all these other things that people worry about. Is cost segregation risky? It's being a real estate professional like am I allowed to do it? Are they going?
Speaker 2:to hit me on the head for it?
Speaker 1:No, but what's going to happen is, as soon as you give them an excuse to come after you like that, they're going to question every little thing you do, and some of this stuff may be hard to really substantiate, like proving that no one else put more than hours in you to materially participate in your short-term rental with a team of cleaners. I mean, we spend hours and hours gathering that documentation and finding ways. So you know, so much could have been avoided if you just gave us the docs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a paper. And whenever you're dealing, yeah, yeah, it's a paper. And whenever you're dealing with the IRS, it's a paper blizzard. You know they love documentation.
Speaker 1:So what I'm wondering now is you know, I'm sure you have some pretty interesting stories here and we like to hear some good stories here and I'm wondering you can probably tell me some good stuff about, tell me about you know a client here that was probably maybe looked like their situation was doomed and some of the some of the things that you were able to do to help them out oh, I have a lot, but one.
Speaker 2:That one that comes to mind and one I talk about a lot is uh, I had a couple come into my office once. They they they heard, you know, an ad on the radio, one of my ads. They came, scheduled an appointment and they came into the office and the wife had no clue regarding the severity of the situation Vis-a-vis. The husband comes in with a stack of unopened IRS notices. So first thing I do is I go through I call it the opening envelope ceremony, where I open, where I open all the envelopes, throw away you know the six pages of garbage and then just keep the uh, the actual notice. And there were about six or seven periods, six or seven notices, and I added them all up and they came to about $420,000 in tax debt. And the wife was in tears just about. She had no inkling what happened. And she turns to her husband and said what is going on? And this is the first time the husband came clean to her in my office. What he did was he forged her name. She worked for AT&T at the time. She had a big pension or a big 401k or what have you. He forged her name on her retirement accounts Somehow got his hands on the money and he had a gambling problem and he gambled it all away. We got him into Gamblers Anonymous and had the secretary of the meeting sign off every time he went. So, in other words, we pre-strategized with the client what he needed to do in order to get a settlement and then we went through, of course, their current financial situation and they didn't have much in way of equity and assets and their disposable income was not a lot of money each month. Bottom line is we settled that case for about $46,000. So they owed $420,000. We settled for $46,000. The wife couldn't be 46. The wife couldn't be. I mean, they couldn't have been happier.
Speaker 2:And the point the reason I tell that story is is the intrinsic feeling I got for helping somebody out like that is indescribable. It's so much different than preparing someone's tax return and delivering them the good or the bad news. I mean, you know. You know people on April 15th have to get their taxes done, but someone who has a tax problem wants to put it behind them. They have to get it done too. But it's a different mindset with regard to the clients, a different type of work. That's just one story.
Speaker 2:I had another guy who owned a business, had a lot of employees racked up about $7 million in trust fund recovery penalties. When you owe payroll taxes, the individual shareholder is responsible for the trust portion of those taxes and the IRS is a very special creditor. They're the only creditor on the planet that can pierce the corporate veil without a court order and go after the individual. So this guy owed like 7 million bucks in trust fund recovery penalties and I just played the 10-year collection statute game with a lot of stall tactics and this, that and the other, and I had the case about 18 months and after 18 months the 10-year collection statute expired and the guy was home free. He got off paying zero and owed $7 million. When he came to me because I knew how the 10-year collection statute expiration date worked and what told the clock, what didn't tell the clock, how to do this particular strategy or don't do this one. So yeah, so that's another story.
Speaker 1:I imagine you made a decent fee on that engagement. Hopefully you know what.
Speaker 2:You know what? I didn't, because I was very new in the business. This was during my first year in the business. You know, 26 years ago. I learned from that, but I did not get a large fee. Today that fee would have been six figures get a large fee.
Speaker 1:Today that fee would have been six figures. Yeah, absolutely, you live and you learn. I remember I did a free consultation for a woman and I noticed that on her Schedule A that the accountant limited the interest, the mortgage interest deduction, to $10,000. I said that's not right. You should be limiting the state interest.
Speaker 2:I was like man. I can't believe I found it.
Speaker 1:This is really cool. And so she got her prior account to amend the return from the free console to see if we can do a plan, and it saved her $8,000 in taxes. And then I pitched the tax plan and showed her what's possible and I pitched a $5,000 tax plan. This is where I was just starting off. And she said I can't believe you would charge that much.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, who do you think you are? I was like I just saved you $8,000 for free. It's amazing, but you know, if that happened today, obviously for someone like that, we would just hold our ground on our feet for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Regarding this married couple where the husband took the 1099, you know withdrew the retirement accounts and invested it away, you can imagine what non-tax and accounting question the audience is curious to know about this couple. Did they stay together?
Speaker 2:other. They did. I mean, it was touch and go for a long, long time. But I think the husband I think he got religion at that time he actually did he entered Gamblers Anonymous. He was on the straight and narrow, at least through the time that we got the offering compromise settled, and I know they were together afterward. I don't know where they are now, but they were together, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, most people would probably split after that, for sure. Yeah, that's a tough one right there, you know, especially because a relationship is built on trust yeah, but you know everybody's, no one's perfect.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:So, now I'm wondering here so you went straight from you. You never you went from from corporate America straight into tax res.
Speaker 2:So I see a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Were you a corporate CPA or did you get your CPA while doing tax?
Speaker 2:How was I? I was a corporate CPA. I got my CPA in the early 80s and went into private industry CPA. I got my CPA in the early 80s and went into private industry. I never worked in public accounting. I had no book of business. When I went into tax risk I had no clients, no book of business, no, nothing. And you know what? In a lot of ways that is an advantage to actually going into the business while you have a traditional accounting business, because it's such a different mindset shift that you have to make, because most accountants don't want to beat up their clients, most accountants.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many referrals we would get from people that came in where their accountant didn't help them, from people that came in where their accountant didn't help them, and they would come in to me. I do the consultation. By the way, the average non-filer has four to seven years of unfiled returns and 50% of resolution clients are non-filers. So they would come to me. They would say to me OK, mike, I'm going to go to my CPA and have the back returns done and I go. Why in the world would you go back to the guy who got you into this mess in the first place. You've been with this guy for seven or eight years. You owe $120,000. If he was any good, he would have helped you out already. So, even though I didn't do tax prep, my firm did $37,000 1040s over a 16-year period because I found a couple of really good EAs around town and we outsourced all the tax prep too.
Speaker 2:Oh nice yeah.
Speaker 1:I had a similar journey in that I was doing internal audit before I jumped into tax play, audit before I jumped into tax play and, similar to you, I think, I got a bad review on a really miserable audit of like and the audit was doomed to start.
Speaker 1:There was no way we would get ever have like reliable data on this audit to really effectively make real recommendations.
Speaker 1:And I just said this is terrible. Like one engagement or one boss who I never chose can just change the whole tone of my work environment and I just said never again. And I also found tax planning to be much more interesting. In fact, I found it fascinating and obsessed over it, no-transcript, and you know they were just so stuck in this box of working for the IRS and doing what I call 10, what I call 1040 factories and not thinking about what opportunities can we create, like how can we help our clients right, but not just stay out of trouble but also, you know, build wealth and create a fortune and be proactive and think creatively and outside of the box and look at all talk about their taxes before the year ends instead of just telling you what you owe. And it's been really gratifying thinking like that and I think there is an advantage coming from a different background and having that fresh mindset instead of having years and years of conditioning to think in the small little box.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely Absolutely. And you have to manage the client differently. I mean, most tax resolution clients are big time procrastinators and you know, if you think you're going to hand somebody you know four income tax guide and organizers to complete and have it back in your office in two weeks, you got another thing coming it ain't going to get done. Office in two weeks. You got another thing coming it ain't going to get done. So you know you got to get on the phone, you got to babysit, you got to fill out the organizer with the client on the phone and that's part of the job. But you know a lot of, and you know, just think about this an accountant in a traditional practice. You think he's going to get on the phone and fill out the income tax guide organizer for the client while he has 500 other clients. He's not going to do that. So it's a different mindset shift.
Speaker 1:So you know, so you've obviously met a lot of other EAs and CPAs and you coach a lot of people in starting their businesses and serving. You know converting over to doing the tax risk stuff, similar to you know we're a little more. You know you guys are reactive, but in a good way, and we're proactive to prevent people from getting in this situation. Right, and you know I think both of us are doing some form of a value price model here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, If you can save someone a couple billion dollars based on the tens of thousands of hours of research and experience you've been through, you could charge on the value of it instead of. Well, this may take a certain amount of hours, hours. However, you know we got to factor in all the time that leading up to this and all the time to sell and all the time we've lost trying to sell to people who don't see the light Right. So how do you think that? How have you seen, like, when people start doing the tax rise compared to the other services and the changes they're seeing in their businesses?
Speaker 2:Well, it's hard for the practitioner to change from billing by the hour to value pricing. In 16 years when I had my business, I never sent out one invoice. I never did billing by the hour. I have a cost accounting background so I actually costed out a lot of the different resolution activities. In other words, how long does it take to do a 433A? How long does it take to release a levy if everything else is in order? How many man hours does it take to do an offer and compromise? That are given a debt amount and the complexity of someone's financial situation. So I costed all that out and came out with a flat fee billing model which basically comes out to about 10% of what the outstanding debt is on the liability. I mean, that's the easy way to think about it. So if someone came, you know, owing $150,000, it was a 12 to $15,000 case. All in, you know to do the compliance work, the discovery work and the permanent resolution work.
Speaker 1:Where do you get most of your business?
Speaker 2:When I was in the business or now with Raw Strategies Both. Well, when I was doing tax resolution, I learned kind of by not by mistake, but I had a radio guy, a radio account exec, come to my office when I first started and I kept throwing him out of the office. He would knock on the door. Mike, I got this great deal. I don't want to talk to you Two weeks later he'd come back. Mike, I got a great deal. Finally, after six times I said okay. Weeks later he'd come back. Mike, I got a great deal. Finally, after six times I said okay.
Speaker 2:So he gave me a deal where it was $1,000 for 20 spots, like $25 a spot, over 14 days, and they were running. They were called wide rotators. They ran from 12 am to 12 pm. I had no control on when those spots would hit. Two of them hit during drive time in the Howard Stern show in Los Angeles in the morning rush hour. So my one phone in my office that I rented would not stop ringing. So I learned that the more controversial the radio personality is, the more rabid a following they have and they will do anything the host tells them to do. So I learned early on to have live endorsed spots by controversial radio personalities and that put me on the map and that fueled my growth. I was actually the number five largest sponsor on Premier Radio in around 2010. I was the premier exclusive tax resolution person for Rush Limbaugh, sean Hannity, glenn Beck. So conservative talk radio is where your tax resolution clients are hanging out, because they're all business owners.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, so you can tell that you're a veteran if you're starting off doing the radio. Are you still doing radio ads?
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now I imagine a lot of it's word of mouth as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean now you know that was. You know I ran that firm for for 16 years. I exited that uh, my my resolution firm about 10 years ago, um, uh, and. And today a lot of it is word of mouth because, um, a lot of CPAs and EAs knew my story back when and I used to go to a lot of conferences every year to hone my skills on the technical end, and a lot of them that I ran into all those years are now members of Raw Strategies. And then the rest of the business comes from social media, facebook and LinkedIn, and I speak on certain stages. So that's where most of the business comes from social media, facebook and LinkedIn. And you know I speak on certain stages, so that's where most of the business comes from.
Speaker 1:Cool, and so what kind of? So now I'm curious to see what kind of people. So we have people listening here, so it's likely that someone or quite a few people here listening either they or a friend or family member is dealing with some tax issues here. So it's likely that someone or quite a few people here listening either they or a friend or family member is dealing with some tax issues here. So you know how much can we accomplish here, what's possible and what type of people could be helped with tax resolution, and what type of people are like. Well, you know, you were just negligent, you got to pay up. What are some determining factors here in seeing who's a good candidate for this type of service Almost.
Speaker 2:Believe it or not, you're not going to believe this and you're going to think I'm full of crap. But almost anybody who owes the IRS can get some kind of reduction, even if it's a small first-time penalty abatement reduction. You know, first-time penalty abatement now you can request over the phone. There's no forms to fill out, it's an administrative waiver. Look, mark, I used to have people who can take out their checkbook, write a check in full and pay the IRS off one lump sum. But they would hire me to be their mouthpiece. They would hire me to get the payoff amount. They would hire me to get the payoff amount. They would hire me to be the quarterback to coordinate the check.
Speaker 2:People do not want to talk to the IRS. Practitioners don't want to talk to the IRS. So I always used to advertise there's a solution to everyone's problem. It may not be the solution that you're hoping for, but there's a solution to everyone's problem. Look, the more destitute you are on paper, the better deal you're hoping for. But there's a solution to everyone's problem. Look, the more destitute you are on paper, the better deal you're going to get with the feds.
Speaker 2:Okay, if you have a lot of equity in your house and your monthly disposable income is high. Yeah, you're not going to get an offering compromise. You're not going to qualify for a partial pay installment agreement, but you may qualify for either first-time penalty abatement or penalty abatement due to reasonable cause. So there's an interview process that we would take everybody through. So even though financially they may be set, there's still a way to reduce some of the debt through penalty abatement.
Speaker 1:Interesting, interesting, and sometimes I hear about these stories where people rack up like $10 million, $15 million, $20 million of tax debt and I'm like how did you guys do that? Like where did all this profit? Because taxes, generally speaking, are derived from profit, so maybe there was like an error in the books, or how did you accumulate all this profit and not at least set aside some money for taxes? How do you think these circumstances, how have you seen?
Speaker 2:this play out. When someone has that large a debt, believe it or not, it's usually not from an operating company, it's usually phantom income where they were a day trader or something to that effect, where they got margin calls and they were taxed on the difference. They never saw the money, they never got the money. Also think Bernie Madoff. I represented many, many families during the mid-2000s or so with regard to phantom income due to Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The other area where those kinds of debts are generated are with shareholders or CEOs or CFOs of companies that owe payroll taxes, where the IRS came against them for the trust fund recovery penalty in the millions of dollars, came against them for the trust fund recovery penalty in the millions of dollars. So usually that's where, when we saw large million dollar tax debts, it was usually either phantom income or the trust fund recovery penalty due to unpaid payroll taxes.
Speaker 1:I mean, you really got to sympathize with these guys who put their fortunes into Madoff. Oh yeah, they paid taxes on all these years on income they weren't making, and then they lose all their money and have back taxes. Yeah, oh, I imagine that must have been infuriated and ruined the lives of so many people.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah, we represented many. You would probably recognize some of the names some wealthy affluent families here in the Los Angeles area.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I mean all over the world. It was just crazy the things that they got with. So let's say, you know, we got some people who got in trouble for some things that maybe were in or outside of their control and they, you know they come to you or your team or someone in your group here and you know they navigate this space and we relieve her. We have some sort of compromise and we're somewhat. You know, we've solved that problem. What?
Speaker 1:are some of the next steps that you may talk to these folks about, about preventative measures and how do we move forward now?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, when you get an offering compromise accepted, you're on what I call tax probation for five years. So in order to keep that offering compromise intact, you have to file and pay on time for the next five years. If you default for the next five years, if you default, all the money that you compromise comes back onto you. So and I have my members offer what we call IRS transcript monitoring service. So for a either an annual fee or a monthly fee, their practitioner monitors their transcripts a few times during the year to make sure they're filing on time and paying on time. And obviously, if they are, you know entrepreneurs and business owners. You know they should also engage someone like yourself for forward looking, you know tax planning, so that they can actually build wealth and save money on future tax liabilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know we're shifting our focus to think more about this and being proactive on our payments too, because in prior years, when bonus depreciation was 100 percent, some of our clients and the tax and the interest rates were really low thinking to themselves well, the interest is so low and I can just take it Instead of paying the IRS.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to put a down payment on a real estate investment, run the cost tag, and the savings from the cost tag will cover the taxes. It used to be common that your down payment would create enough tax savings that you'd get it back in the form of down payments. So it was an effective way of looking at it and it was like taking a loan from the IRS at a low interest rate. Well, that strategy and way of thinking is a little flawed, a little more flawed now, because now we're at 60% and soon we're going to be at 40% bonus, so you're not going to get as much.
Speaker 2:And the interest rate at IRS right now is I think it's going to come down, but it's at 8% right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now it's at 8%. So now you're paying a little more interest, it's going to accumulate faster and it's going to be a little harder to pay down. And now we've got to worry about substantial underpayments as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you made a great point, mark Because we would tell clients you know they didn't understand that if they owed you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax debt, what we told them was what you just said. We would say you know what, mark? You use the IRS as your bank all these years. You know it's time to pay the loan back. I mean, you know, when you put it in those terms it's easier for them to understand sometimes, because really what they did was they used the IRS as their bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know now, that's not such a bad idea all the time.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest when I was starting off, I was doing the same thing. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I know one of my friends. She's a smart cookie. She's taking advantage of the IRSs interest rates by pre-paying taxes and overpaying taxes and then getting some interest income from the irs.
Speaker 2:I was like that's sharp, that's good yeah, I don't know about giving more money to the irs than they deserve yeah, I mean it's better than the high interest savings savings account yeah 5.5%, 5, 5.5%, 8%.
Speaker 1:You're beating it. We have another client and this has just been such a pain in the neck. The client is expecting like a $480,000 refund and it's only because they made too much in quarterly payments based on a prior year activity. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:The accountant wasn't proactive and didn't acknowledge that the AGI dropped. So they're paying all these massive quarterly payments and you know the return was filed in mid-October and the refund still hasn't come in. We've been hounding the IRS. Now we have the local House of Representative office to represent us and give us a refund and the silver lining, although it's been incredibly stressful for them and some customers Interest yeah, now that 480 is now going to be more, like you know, 530 or so Yep, you know maybe 40 grand coming out of this thing.
Speaker 1:So, at least you know they're collecting a decent amount of income here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where else are you going to collect guaranteed 8% interest?
Speaker 2:Yeah, not too many places. So there's a silver lining there?
Speaker 1:I mean, if they had a little more, if they were a little more comfortable and they didn't really want the cash flow back, I said, hey, let them take their time, yeah yeah, that's true, that's funny.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting way to look at it. But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting situation there. So you know we. So I'm curious now what? Are some exciting projects or big things you're working on.
Speaker 2:One of the things we just well, we introduced two things over the last several months. One is a marketing CRM dedicated to the tax resolution industry. Most practitioners, you know accounts have a tough time with marketing and they think if they have like Pitbull Tax or TaxDome or Canopy or one of those, they think that's a CRM and it's not. It's a workflow management system. A real marketing CRM manages the client journey from the first contact until they actually become a client. So we developed one strictly for the tax resolution industry and I basically uploaded some of my successful marketing campaigns into that as well. So that's one exciting thing that we were launching.
Speaker 2:The other thing we launched in August was we call it the EA Pathways Program. We realized that there are so many unlicensed practitioners out there that, yeah, you can take advantage of one of the EA exam review courses, but what I developed is a community around this. So not only are you learning how to take a test, we're also teaching them, as an unlicensed practitioner, how they can make money while they're earning their EA by showing them how to use an IRS transcript module and also how to install a client care package into their practice. So we just launched it. We had a really good take rate, so we're probably going to roll that out sometime in 2025.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing. You know, I wish I knew about that when I was in accounting grad school, because that would have saved me from some of the silly things I was doing to make an extra buck and afford rent at that time.
Speaker 1:I wish I knew about something like that to give me some more meaningful experience for sure. Yeah, yes, so tell me about. So for the folks listening, can you tell us this? So, for the folks listening, can you tell us this? You know, if you give us a call to action where they can go and learn more about what you offer to the public in the form of services or to the accounting firms, what are some of the things that people want to learn more and connect with you and tap into some of your ideas?
Speaker 2:So we have on the website, which is rozstrategiescom, r-o-z. Strategiescom there's a free two-hour webinar that introduces you to tax resolution and what's possible, and I run through some scenarios with regard to cases. That's one thing. We're also running. We run every two weeks. We run what we call the five-day to 5K tax resolution challenge, where we can show you how to get your first $5,000 client in five days if you do the homework. And that's also on the homepage rawstrategiescom. If you have a tax problem or you have a client that has a tax problem, you can email info at rawstrategiescom and we'll connect you with one of our members across the country. We have 450 tax resolution practitioners doing tax res throughout the US, so we can also connect you with someone perhaps in your area that can help you.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, that is Roz R-O-Z strategiescom. Yes, Awesome. Well, you know, Mike, I really enjoy our conversation and appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2:This was fun.
Speaker 1:It's always fun to talk to someone, a fellow tax enthusiast here, and you know we tell lots of stories and you know it's I'm excited to share this with with our audience. And also, if you guys are interested in being a client, you can go to Prosperl P-R-O-S-P-E-R-L-C-P-A dot com. Slash referral Sorry, slash apply. And also you can just shoot us an email and you'll know where to find us. We're all over the place, so I hope you guys enjoy the show and stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Thank you, mark Also go to the site.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of free stuff. Free five-minute tax plan, community, all that beautiful stuff. Go to the site, have some fun. Hopefully we'll-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mark's the man. When it comes to tax planning and doing what you do, mark is the man.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, Mike.
Speaker 2:All right, take care, mark. Thank you.