Has anyone used The Tax Club?

I can only imagine that an online virtual accountant would be worse than an online lawyer. < insert joke here >.

$1500 seems really high to me, and the hard sell reasies some serious issues. Especially since if you're _really_ bootstrapping you could do your books yourself and if you have a business with any revenue an accountant would makes things much, much easier.

hossman's remark on http://www.fluther.com/disc/1352/whats-the-best-way-for-me-to-make-a-legal-will/ really convinced me, as well as Guy Kawasaki's remarks in http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/482413_for_lega.html, but that's more about online legal stuff.

If they crossed the line, call your State AG or the Better Business Bureau and make a complaint. If you have been 85 yrs old, they might have gotten that $1500 from you.

I also setup by LLC with Legal Zoom and was contacted by The Tax Club. I had used a CPA for a S-Corp i setup in the mid-90's so i knew that their fees were low. I choose the 'Saver' membership for a one-time initial setup fee of $2,000 and an on-going monthly fee of $19.99. When i had my old corp, my CPA charged me around $1,400/year plus $125/hour for questions throughout the year. My membership with The Tax Club has already paid for itself twice over after only three years as a member. And all i pay going forward is $19/month or $240/year. Plus there are no fees for speaking with an accountant. They do sell you over the phone, but the guy was upfront, his job was to get me in the club. Keep in mind they also offer a $1000 guarantee of the service--i recommend you reconsider.

I also setup with Tax Club six months ago and they tax advisor was PERSISTENT in signing me up. But he was upfront saying he was there to bring me in, because the benefits i would receive. The services have been great, i always reach an accountant, and the fees are very low when compared with a regular CPA. At first i thought $1500 was a lot but that is a one-time fee, my on-going cost is rock bottom. I used to sell mortgages so telesales people get bad raps, but the services are for real.

The two positive comments above came from people who joined Fluther on the same day to post exactly one comment.

When I was googling The Tax Club I saw a lot of people online saying nice things that sounded exactly like what joseph was saying. But the tone is always a little off.

I'm suspicious that the comments are fake.

I have heard a little about these guys, mainly from other blogs and posts and articles on the web. It seems as if their system is pretty unique in that you can call an accountant anytime for info, that is a huge deal if it is true. I know in the book Millionaire Next Door Stanley comments that the #1 activity for millionaires is to talk with their CPA’s on a constant basis. So the idea is fresh and has merit, i guess the key is making sure they are legit.

Is Stanley a CPA in his spare time? There are all the tax tips you need online if you do due diligence.

You missed the point entirely. Whether or not Stanley is a CPA, MD, DER or an FBI agent, has nothing to do with the fact that wealthy people in this country take constant advice from accountants. Just because i have access to Web MD, doesn’t mean i am going to go there for tips on how to perform my yearly physical; I think I’ll let my doc handle that—I am pretty sure his overall perspective, based on years of schooling, research and trial and error will be more practical than my own. But good luck to you doing “everything” yourself.

I joined the tax club and all I got was sales calls once a week trying to sell me other services for thousands of dollars. The accountant never called just accounting analysts. In other words another sales guy reading a script and selling me something else. I have started a class action against The Tax Club. Join if you were defrauded: link

I initially signed up with The Tax Club based on an ad I saw at LegalZoom.com. I paid an initial one-time $1500 payment plus $20/month. After I signed up, they said that they wanted to schedule phone calls with me to discuss my tax planning. I assumed this was to help with preparation of my tax records for the preparation of my tax return. It turned out that every call (there were about 6 calls scheduled) were to sell additional cost services to me. Plus the sales approach was combative. Regardless, The Tax Club did prepare my 2008 tax return to my satisfaction. I received a call today (12/30/09) that was to discuss the status of preparing my 2009 tax return. I found out that I was going to have to spend an additional $850 to have the 2009 tax return prepared even though I had paid the initial $1500 fee plus I had been paying the monthly $20 fee that I thought was to go towards the preparation of my current year tax return. It turns out the $20/mth fee was only for access to tax consultants. So I cancelled my account. I can prepare my own business/personal tax return at much lower cost using TurboTax’s business/home tax software. The Tax Club is a ripoff.

RUN! It is a rip off. Global Cash Flow Network referred my name to them. They called me and said they were recommended by GCFN to handle the tax end and that they could save me a lot of money, etc. I got a Fast talking guy, who said their office was in the Empire State Building. My fee was $3680, 6 times the fee of our CPA who has handled our business tax filings for 42 years. The Tax Club said they would be handling our taxes, including my husband’s, and asked for his SSN and his income, etc… which had nothing to do with them. I told them that would not be happening. I did not sign any of the forms they sent me and tried getting hold of Mary Gersten’s Global Cash Flow Network who was giving out my personal info to her affiliates. GCFN has an answering machine picking up their phone, saying to hold on and that the calls are being answered in the order received. They had gotten $6495 already out of me and that was suppose to cover everything. Then they gave my number out to her affiliates and The Tax Club was one of them. Another was a shopping mall that “Needed to be Added” to the site for another $2495, even though I was suppose to have shopping with the original site, (but of course this was better with more stores). I told them that my original set up was suppose to cover everything and they said that there were just a few more things that needed to be added. Then 3 more calls from people trying to get me in their affiliate program under GCFN. When you call, GCFN asks for your customer ID, so I guess they are screening the calls…. but after holding on the phone, waiting on them to answer in the order received for about 20 minutes, they tell you to leave your phone number and they’ll get back with you. That never happens. I fell for their line and 2 of these programs (plus theirs),and I paid for the GCFN full package with 20,000 visitors and them answering my responses which was suppose to bring visitors to all their affiliate sites on my website….. then they won’t my return calls. I cannot even log-in to my site…without a flag “Relay access denied – an unexception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Review the stack trace for more info about the error where it occurred.” They send you an email to click on a link to see if you see your problem there and I get another bad link flag. Huh? What am I to do with that information?
Early after I first got in, I did speak with them and told them I could not log in and they said that they could log-in just fine. Well I cannot and I am the one who paid them to set it up where I could log in and have a home business. Now it’s months later and still it’s a mess; when I asked if anyone had come and bought anything from my site… they said to check my back office, which I am being denied access to. With no response from GCFN, why would I need the TAX CLUB to do my taxes? We are on wireless satellite here and I’ve been told by a computer satellite person that I would never be able to access it unless they knew how to do a few simple things to make it possible from their end.

I left a number again the other day with the Tax Club and it was not returned either. I am filing refunds with my credit cards that all these charges were put on.When I joined Global Cash Flow Network with the Ultimate Traffic Package, the second sentence in the first paragraph said, “As one of the “Unadvertised Bonuses” we’ve reviewed dozens of companies and programs and we are able to provide a great resource: tax savings for you and your business…The rest of the paragraph, in fact the entire rest of the full page letter is plugging THE TAX CLUB. She mentions that it makes just about any small business like ours almost free!” Folks, more information is out there now, than when I checked, do your research better than I did. This has been a nightmare!!
GO TO www.work-at-home-forum.com and get some honest testimonials. To not go to the SCAM sites from Arizona. Gersten has gotten to them. At first, I thought it was me. I graduated from college in the ‘60’s and no one had computers then…and when I decided to look for a work at home program and started with it, I thought I was just doing something wrong. Even though I had never had a problem with my EcoQuest (Vollara, now) website, I also had not used it for marketing.Now I know that with my satellite system here, if the programmers did not know how to set up the system for it to work correctly, then I would never be able to log in. I did tell them from day 1 that we were on a wireless satellite and not hooked up to a phone line.

I’ve used the tax club in the past, and thought they were totally helpful. Not sure why you’re having the problems you are with them, maybe you should call them up and find out?

I signed up for The Tax Club because it was referred to me by legal zoom. At the time I was told there was an initial fee of $1600 and a monthly fee of $20. This ensures tax preparation every year.

The first 2 years went smoothly. Now they are telling me I need to pay $895 a year for tax prep in addition to the $20 per month. I was never told of this fee and they have no documentation of any such fee.

The original contract says nothing about a tax prep fee. They have apologized to me for forgetting to mention the $895.00 per year fee, however they will not refund any of my money. They also have admitted that there is no documentation anywhere of any such fee.

I have 2 small children to support and a struggling small business. I never would have signed up had I been informed about these fees. If there is ever a class action suit against The Tax Club I want to be involved, please contact me.

I am out a lump sum of $1600.00 along with $20 a month since Aug of 2008 equaling $600. Plus additional fees that have cropped up now and again that I haven’t questioned in the past. If I had stayed with my original accountant from before I signed up with The Tax Club I would have paid a total of less than $600.00 for the past 2 years of tax prep.