Yet another late night infomercial house has fallen into trouble. As Janet Novack on Forbes reported, “Owe The IRS? TaxMasters Bankruptcy Shows Why Not To Get Help From TV Pitchmen.”
TaxMasters, like all of the late night infomercial firms, says that they can settle your tax troubles for “pennies on the dollar.” Sure they can, as long as your balance sheet looks like TaxMasters’s. As I’ve said before, anyone can apply for an Offer in Compromise. If you really, really can’t pay your tax debt, you’ll have a chance of having an OIC accepted. On the other hand, if you are making a lot of money and you want an OIC, well, I have a bridge to sell you.
The worst thing about some of these firms (I can’t specifically cite TaxMasters, as I don’t know their business model) is that they wanted huge retainers up front…huge non-refundable retainers. That was apparently the model of Roni Deutch (the now closed “Tax Lady”), which led to a lot of unhappy customers.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Here’s a little music to wake up to:
