CPAacademy.org Check-In | Episode 11: Eric Green, Esq

Part 1

Scott Zarret, CPA

Hello, everybody. This is Scott Zarrett. I'm the president of CPA Academy. I'm here with my friend Eric Green. How are you, Eric?

Eric Green, Esq

I'm good.

Scott Zarret, CPA

I'm happy to be here with you, especially for my first ever check in. This is something we've been doing this year, and I'm really excited to have you as my guest. And so how about I start out, Eric, by providing just a little bit of background on our relationship together, and then we could jump into some questions that have been on my mind. But yeah, looking forward to getting into some fun conversation with you.

Eric Green, Esq

I'm very honored to be the first one.

Scott Zarret, CPA

So we've been taking turns around the team doing interviews, and this is the first interview that I've done, so my team's been involved with some really great ones, 

Eric Green, Esq

But I got the number one guy.

Scott Zarret, CPA

And by way of introduction, for those of you who haven't met Eric before, seen him present, he's the founder of an amazing organization called the Tax Rep Network. And if I have my numbers correct, Eric, you serve a community of 400,000 tax, accounting, and legal professionals. Is that inaccurate?

Eric Green, Esq

Yeah, that see our stuff or do something with us?

Scott Zarret, CPA

Yeah. Amazing. And beyond educating in webinar format and in person, you're also an author. A couple series to be familiar with would be The Insider's Guide and The Guide to Building a Million Dollar Tax Rep Practice, which I hope we can talk about a bit in our conversation today. And you're also the founder of the New England IRS Representation Conference, which just blows me away. I don't know how you do so much in any given year. It's truly mind blowing. And like to ask you about that too, but just for some context. We've been working together for a really long time, Eric, and you've presented nearly 150 webinars with us. And every class that we've done, or the average attendance for those 150 classes has been 700 people per class, which is incredible. And it's added up to you getting in front of over 50,000 of our members. And the reason I was so excited to have you with us today is because I read the reviews, I look at the scores, and you are at the top of the heap.

And I want to thank you, first of all, just for all of your valuable insights. Among the profession and specifically for our members and all the advice that you've been providing taxpayers throughout the years. And as a person who really appreciates the amount of work that goes into presenting, I know how challenging that could be. So I think I just want to start out by asking, what is it like for you to put out so much content? You have a six part series that we're launching here very soon. And, I mean, is that daunting to you? Does it just roll off your tongue? What is that like coming up with so much content?

Eric Green, Esq

Well, one of the advantages of actually practicing is we have this stuff going on all the time. So honestly, I think what makes me attractive as a speaker is we have real client stories all the time, so it's always fresh content. It's always new, and it's pretty easy to put together because it's what we. have going on know? What do we have that's interesting? In fact, we'll actually be working on a case, and Jeff Roman will be like, you know, that'd make a great webinar. So it sort of just feeds itself. And I enjoy doing mean I'm kind of a frustrated professor I think at heart. I actually wanted to be a professor, and my parents were school teachers said, don't be a professor. But I think in reality, I'd like to just teach.

Scott Zarret, CPA

So your inspiration, you say, comes from the challenges that you face or the stories that you hear as much as what you read in the newspaper and are trying to get in front of.

Eric Green, Esq

When it comes to IRS Representation, what I think is interesting is the perception. Is it's very hard, complicated. Got to be a lawyer. It's IRS very scary. And most accountants don't realize they can do this. It's not that complicated. And one of the terrific things I think about tax rep network is to watch the members sort of discover this. So we get the emails like, they just accepted my first offer, or I just got rid of the penalties and I'm a hero. And inevitably, that wasn't as hard as you thought it was. It's really process and form. And so it's enjoyable to watch people who are otherwise, I think, kind of frustrated with bookkeeping and tax returns to realize there's a whole other world that they can take their skill set into and make more money and, frankly, work less. It's enjoyable.

I also learned from them they have interesting cases come in, and what started as sort of a goof, right, I'll educate some folks who want to be educated has become hundreds and hundreds of people. It's a whole community now.

Scott Zarret, CPA

What would you say have been the biggest areas of reluctance for CPAs to get involved? How have you cracked that code? Made them feel most comfortable that they don't know too much to be dangerous. What are the emotional barriers that you need to overcome? To get someone to cross that.

Eric Green, Esq

For the accountants, it's the fact that they can do this. That it really. I'll give you an example, Scott. An Offer and Compromise is a formula, reasonable collection potential. In fact, my web guy Clemens has heard it so much he could open his own rep practice. I mean, he's got it memorized. It's really a formula. So for the accountants, it's understanding. One, you can do this. If you can do a 1040 return, you can do an Offer and Compromise. And two, people are always like, well, I don't want to fight with the IRS. First of all, we're not really fighting. We're helping taxpayers get their stuff together and get it resolved. And if you want to think about it, we do criminal cases we litigate in Tax Court in 25 year. Neither Jeff or I has been audited.

It's not like the government is going to come after us. And in fact, quite frankly, we help them. We help get taxpayers back into the system, help them resolve things. The revenue officers we know here locally, usually when we call, they're like, oh good, I'm glad he finally hired somebody because they're frustrated by dealing with the taxpayers who don't know what they're doing. So for the accountants, it's understanding you can do this. It's not that big a deal.

For the lawyers, it's the reverse. They're very entrepreneurial. They see the business opportunity. They're just afraid they don't want to do tax.

The bankruptcy lawyers are like, oh my God, I hate tax. It's not really tax. I don't really do technical tax. It's really about process in front of a federal agency. So I'm telling them if you can do a bankruptcy, the schedules, the financial, it's very similar. If you get a really real serious tax question, call the CPA. That's what we I mean, Jeff and I could research that we have LLMs and Tax, but it's not really what we do. We're not planners. We don't do returns. It's really process. So I think especially for the accountants, it's recognizing there's a business opportunity these taxpayers will pay, and they'll pay a premium because they need help and you already have the skills. So really it's a matter of just kind of rolling up your sleeves and doing it. And if you're nervous, that's what Tax rep network does.

We're your help desk. So they're consulting with us so they're not out trying to do this by themselves. Read a book and then go try to do it.

Scott Zarret, CPA

So is it safe to say that some of the reluctance in the past may have been not having those resources when they do need some expert advice and that safety net or what tax rep networks provides in terms of resources is one reason that people may decide to go for it? Whereas if they were on their own and had to go it alone and just didn't know what they didn't know that. There may be more of a reluctance.

Eric Green, Esq

Right. I never intended to be doing this. I was an estate planner. I got out of law school. I did go to KPMG. I was doing state and local audit, defense. I went on my own, wanted to be an estate planner, which is what I was doing. So back you go, back to 99, 2000, I'm an estate planner.

2001, we moved to Connecticut, still an estate planner, but I found a client who had a problem with the IRS. Now, back then, you could go to the IRS, and they had these things over there called human beings, and you could talk to them, and they honestly trained me to do this. I tell the story in the million dollar practice book. I went in, and his name was Jim Mori. He's now long retired. So I went in, and I'm like, because I'm a lawyer, right? I'm going to negotiate. And I started on my client's story and blah, blah, blah. And Mr. Mori, who, by the way would always be poker faced, so he's sitting there listening to me, and finally. He said, you have no idea what you're doing, do you? I'm like, wow, it's not obvious?

No, I don't. All right, Mr. Green. Mr. Green. OK. Call me Mr. Green. Mr. Green, your client has to be in compliance. What's compliance? Glad you asked. And they taught me how to do this today because of automation, because of everything being campus driven, they've shuttered a lot of the local offices. In many ways, you need to be trained now, because you can't kind of get away with the way I did. You can learn on the job, but you're going to have to do a lot more independent research. But again, that tax rep. We have training, we have books, we have letters and forms you can use. You don't have to recreate anything. It's all there for you. But the need today is actually larger, and it's interesting. Scott, when I started doing this and I started speaking for CCH, they asked me, they said, how many people do this? So went into Martindale Hubble, probably the largest database of lawyers anywhere at the time, there were 865 lawyers that either did IRS representation or tax controversy as a practice area. Today, it's about 130. The reason is no one leaves the government anymore. Back 20 years ago, everyone did the same thing. They went into the government, they did the four years that they had signed on for, and then they were out.

 

They'd go out into private practice, make money. Today between big firms letting people go, imploding this safety of big law, that's all gone. Nobody leaves the government. I know we've tried to recruit people out of the government to come to the firm. They're going to stay into retirement, and when they retire, they don't want anything to do with this. Just retiring so it's a much different world. So CPAs and EA's are really the people that are filling the void.

Scott Zarret, CPA

When did you realize that was where you needed to shift to be what was the year you mentioned? When it's dropped down significantly to 130 attorneys. But when did you realize that the shift was going to be towards CPAs? Is that where Tax Rep Network immediately went toward?

Eric Green, Esq

Around 2001, I have a client that gets in trouble. I go, I start learning to do this. You would think that clients who had a tax problem would keep it to themselves. No, they tell everybody. So I'm now getting referrals because I'm now the IRS guy. I just start doing more and more of this now. How do you get work as a lawyer? I would back then, there were no webinars in 2003, I would invite in accountants, rent a room, give them drinks and some more Durbs, do a talk, and just get cases referred to me. Back around 2008, 2009, I had a CPA literally walk up to me at the end of one of these, and he said, I would pay you if you would teach me to do this. I was, huh? So I put together what I thought was like a full day training program, and I invited a bunch of friends into a room on a Saturday and did the program and got good feedback. And so I started just sort of selling the program.

CCH saw it, licensed it from me. There's all kinds of funny stories about all of that. But anyway, if we have time but anyway, so we put out this IRS representation certificate program. That's how it started.

Scott Zarret, CPA

You designated the program. This is something like you came up with the name of the certificate and you were the label.

Eric Green, Esq

They put out their IRS representation certificate program, which, by the way, we did. Have a fight with the IRS, because people would call the IRS to confirm that we could certify them. The IRS. Of course. Contacted. I said, no, it's by CCH. And I had to give them the website, and that kind of ended that. But anyway, so CCH starts selling this, and accountants would email me saying, look, I saw the videos, love the videos. Can I refer someone to you? And I'm like, well, why don't you do it? I don't know what I'm doing. I'll coach you. So I'm sending retainer agreements now to accountants all over the country. One of them emailed me after about a year and said, can we just come up with a monthly fee?

I'm like, okay, so at the time I was $400 an hour. So I said, look, why don't we do 297 as a discount, but every month? And he said, fine. So I emailed like, these 30 accountants, and I said, is anyone else interested in this? And like, all 30 were. So instantly I have 30 members. And I was like, Well, I got to do something for this, aside from answering questions. So I started doing some training, and it just sort of became now we're 450 members. We have 170 hours of on demand training, 300 checklists letters and forms. We have a whole tax rep social network within the website.

Scott Zarret, CPA

Can you say that again, Eric, you go a little slower. Those are interesting stats.

Eric Green, Esq

It's just shy of 450 members. Inside tax rep is 170 hours of on demand training on everything, audit, appeals, blogging, all of that. We have 330, I think, around checklist letters and forms they can download and use. So they have our penalty abatement letters, all of that stuff, appeal letters. And it's gotten to the point we have a social network aspect, so they can go on to tax rep social and post and talk to each other. So it's really sort of become a real community around this, and it's a lot of fun, I have to tell you. I enjoy the give and take, interesting problems, and it's one of the more fun aspects of my job.

Scott Zarret, CPA

Wow. So if you're anything like me, right, you have all these amazing stats to share, and then in the end, you see all the areas you're like, but that's not good enough. Here are all the blind spots. Here are things we haven't done. So you've got all 170 hours of this content, 40 hours of marketing, 330 checklists.

What don't you have? This is quite a trajectory. 2009 wasn't that long ago for what you have created since then. So now you've got all this. What do you dream of? What's missing? What's the next phase? Where do you go from here?

Eric Green, Esq

This summer, I looked at, okay, here's what we have. What are we missing? So, for instance, whistleblowing. I do a course on whistle. In fact, Mike Villan, I often do it with you on CPA Academy. Once a year, we do a whistleblowing program. I actually am getting an award. I just got the letter from the IRS. It's not going to be huge, but it's nice. So I actually this morning took all the letters for an entire case from start to finish, and we're uploading it today. So there'll be a whole section on whistleblowing. The video that Mike and I have done and all of our letters and everything. Worker classification, reasonable comp, I'm building out. I don't tend to do a lot with litigation because the accountants aren't really interested in it. But as we get more and more lawyers, jeff and I have started doing more on tax court litigation, refund litigation.

So we're kind of building that out, and we're just always finding, like, where are the gaps? And sometimes we just go deep diving into something. So, for instance, we've had an offers workshop offering compromise forever. We didn't really ever go into detail. Line item by line item, how to do a form 433, which is the collection form. It can be complicated. We now have 4 hours just line item by line item, how to complete the form properly. So it's one of those things where you keep going wide, but every now and then you go into the niches. And plus, a lot of it comes from the know eric, I have this issue. Do you have anything on this? And someone be like, you know what? No, but I can create something or I have that letter. Let me go find the case. And so we're always kind of adding and putting stuff up and tweaking because just the feedback from the members.

Part 2

Scott Zarret, CPA

You still do the work yourself, too. Are you training or are you involved in some of the bigger cases?

Eric Green, Esq

We have 25 people here now, admittedly, once it's going to get to litigation, I'll hand it off to Lisa and Jeff, who really do litigation more and more. I tend to do the training, but I had an appeal hearing this morning where we got on this. Yeah, no, I still have clients. I still have cases. The difference is, when you have 25 people, I kind of get to pick and choose what I want to do, and what I don't want to do, I can hand to other people. 

Scott Zarret, CPA

What do you prefer? Do you do the work? Let's call it the work. Do you do it because it just keeps you sharp, it keeps your ear to the ground in terms of what people need, because it's really your core, what you've been doing for so long. What do you prefer if you weren't obligated to serve the community? Would you prefer to teach? Would you prefer to handle the complex cases? Is it just honestly balance?

Eric Green, Esq

I don't want to give up practice entirely. I prefer to teach. But first of all, there's the fear. Well, what makes I think tax rep better than any other program that's out there is that we really do this. A lot of my competitors don't do this. They did it once or they used to do it. They're ten years out now. We actually do it. And it's also how we have all the connections with the IRS, all the executives and all of that, which are connections that we need. One, they provide great information to the community, but also those connections are helpful when things start to go awry in actual cases. But the other thing, in honesty, having done this so long, I've now started accumulating famous clients. Never happened. So people I'll get a call from someone and be like, I know you. And they're like, yeah, I was on TV and I have this tax issue, or they sent me this notice, and we don't know what they're talking about.

And so I now get to spend more time with very interesting people, former politicians, government folks, military folks. So my practice, it hasn't really changed, but the level that I'm doing it at and who I get to practice with or for has shifted, and it's actually very interesting.

Scott Zarret, CPA

What can you share and what can't you I mean, obviously, my ears perk up when you say you've got these high profile fun cases. Are they, like, all off limits to speak about and even when the cases settle?

Eric Green, Esq

Yeah, because for the most part, my stuff is not public. But I have folks that are on TV, that have been on reality show TV shows. I have folks that are former politicians in Congress. I have former NFL football players, former baseball player, former hockey player, NHL. We have a few people that are in Hollywood. Yeah, no, I've resolved the tax issue from two families that were fighting that owned a product that I can guarantee everyone listening to this has used. They were in a very public battle for control of the company. I ended up representing them. It's all good.

Scott Zarret, CPA

Be so much cooler if you could actually share the names. But that's okay. I'm totally kidding.

Eric Green, Esq

But interestingly, they don't tell everybody about their problems.

Scott Zarret, CPA

That's where the question came from earlier. You're like, everyone wants to tell everyone about their problems. I'm like, do they? Because sometimes I feel like they didn't want to end up on the front page of The New York Times. Why do some people want to share these tax woes with others?

Eric Green, Esq

I think that the folks who are more local, the landscapers, the contractors, I think they tend to kind of bitch to each other. Blah, blah. I get the sales tax problem. I did too. Call Eric. And so a lot of them refer a lot of their friends. I helped a general contractor here with some nonsensical sales tax audit. So happy ten years on any sub that he has where they have a levy notice you got to go see. So it's like a constant treadmill of people just coming in who are subcontractors on some of his larger jobs. He said, you got to go solve this. Go see Eric.

Scott Zarret, CPA

What about those folks that there's been a rise in? I mean, so I'd imagine that's not a position that anyone wants to be in. What's the silver lining here beyond CPAs? Being able to work with non filers who owe money to the IRS to represent.

Eric Green, Esq

The CPAs. But yeah, how do they we love non filer cases. Non filer cases are very profitable. The other thing is, there's a lot you can do for, you know, the folks that file, they have a balance now. They come in, we don't have as much wiggle room. Right? I mean, it's formulaic. It is what it is. But when non filers come in now, there's a lot of strategy. Married filing, joint married filing, separate. Do we want to get the state out ahead of the IRS? Because if the state assesses and you have a payment plan with the state first, that's an allowable expense. We can actually use the state payment plan to leverage away and compromise away the IRS. So there's a lot of really cool things you can do. So first of all, Scott, I don't know that there are more non filers.

What I think has actually happened, the government has gotten better and better at identifying the non filers. So the people that used to hide in the shadows, it's very hard to be off grid these days. And the IRS has access to every database under the sun. So, like, for instance, we've done an offer not long ago where the IRS offer specialist called and said, can we get the other we need the income for the other person in the house. So my assistant called and said, is there someone else living with you? And they were like, yeah, my girlfriend moved in three months ago. How do they know that? They have the postal database, they have the DMV database. So I think the government has really just shrunk things so that it's harder and harder for people to hide. So that more than 10 million non filers that they've identified.

I think it's really more their use of data and artificial intelligence to pick up on the fact that there are non filers or someone is a non filer has made it easier for them to go after them. But the other thing is, the non filers bookkeeping often has to be done. Tax returns have to be prepared, and that's a lot of work. And then you get into the resolution. We surveyed our members back in 2001. The average non filer case was over $17,000 for our members. When you factor in getting the returns done, the state resolving the tax issue. So they're fairly lucrative. And so is the IRS systematically going.

Scott Zarret, CPA

After non filers who have more income. Are there as many non filers at the high income tax bracket as there are at the low income? And how do they decide who to go after or who to write letters to?

Eric Green, Esq

This is just my own observation. I think there are more non filers that are high income, and the reason being more of the low income people tend to be w two. And we do have non filer w two people. But usually the government will just create a substitute for return and send them a bill. That's usually enough to get them to go in and file the returns. But the higher end folks who have multiple investment partnerships, consolidated returns, S Corps, those are the type of returns that the IRS can't just create. The other thing is they haven't been able to go after them because they're lacking the auditors to do it. So I think the push from the IRS is to get more of those CPA type auditors who have to be trained. You can't just hire, throw them through two weeks of training and send them out to the field.

These are folks that need to be groomed and brought along and that's just going to take time. So the whole thing with the funding and they're going to be 27,000 new auditors baloney. They won't be able to hire 2700 new auditors. It's really going to be they're going to do more with automation. And with all the news coming out now about information being shared by some of the retail chains, tax prep chains oh, yeah, that hit the news, I think, last night. I think you're going to see there's going to be pressure on Congress to now move into this space. So that whole thing about free file, although the retail places didn't want that, I think that the government's going to feel they have no choice now to come in and regulate it. So did I also read that the.

Scott Zarret, CPA

IRS got a funding boost of something like $80 billion? Is that you know what I'm referring to?

Eric Green, Esq

Yeah, they got 80 billion over ten years. And with the debt ceiling deal that Congress did, they managed to claw back, I think about 19 million of it. So it's more like 61 billion. And again it got clawed back like from the later years. So it's not going to impact the IRS right now. But what's interesting is everyone talks about it's a big number. It really just gets the IRS back to where they were in 2010. Staffing wise. The budget has been cut year after year and with all of the wave of retirements out of the government, you saw during COVID the phone lines, everything, the government is shorthanded. They just don't have enough people. So yes, they have bots now that will answer the phones and can deal with a percentage of the phone calls, but they just need more people and they have to upgrade their systems.

I mean, they were working with computer systems, some of them from the, you know, this, they need to put a new system in place, run them parallel for a while before you shut down the old one. That is time, money, investment. And that's really where a big chunk of the money is going. It's all going to get more automated. It just is. And hopefully it'll be more accessible with online portals and everything. Security is a big deal with the government. I think they have a million attempted hacks a week on their system. Million. Yeah, we get I mean, so security is a big deal for them. I mean, think about if someone hacks the IRS, you got a candy store, socials tax information, banking information. It'd be a nightmare. So it's something they take very seriously. The next ten years are going to be interesting as the IRS kind of brings itself up into the current state of where they should be and the changing landscape.

But I think for most of the accountants, just doing 1040s or just doing bookkeeping is not the future.

Scott Zarret, CPA

So Eric, so with so many different courses that you offer and so many different resources for a CPA EA bookkeeper out there, who's looking to get deeper, going down the rabbit hole of really understanding how they may be able to get involved? What's the best starting point, what's the best topic? Tax controversy. Offering compromises. Where do you send the folks? Where do you send the folks that are familiar but looking to go deeper? What's the path of education?

Eric Green, Esq

Well, so in order to be on the power of attorney, you need to be a licensed attorney somewhere, a licensed CPA somewhere, or an enrolled agent. So the first thing is if you're unenrolled, go get your EA, don't join tax mean, you can help clients, but you can't be on a power of attorney. You can't do the representation. You're really kind of doing this with one hand tied behind your back. So my first thought would be go become an EA, spend your time, pass the exam, get your EA.

Scott Zarret, CPA

Whether you're attorney, whether you're a CPA or attorney, you got to get the EA.

Eric Green, Esq

Well, no, if you're CPA and attorney, you're good. If you're an EA, you're good. But if you're unenrolled, okay, you don't want to go to law school and the CPA exam, you go get an accounting degree and take that exam in a thousand hours. Know, forget about that. Fastest way if you're an unenrolled preparer like bookkeeper is go get your EA. That's the fastest way into being able to do representation. Once you've done that, when members join, the first thing we say is, what are you interested in? Do you like financials? Do you want to do audits, appeals, forensic, reconstruction? Is auditing bookkeeping accounting your thing or do you really like tax? Now, you could do all of it, but where do you start? My thought is always start with where you're interested. What would you like to do? If you want to do collection and offers and all of that, we've got tons of that because when you first come into tax rep, it can be a little overwhelming.

There's a menu that's where do you begin? We actually have created a start here series of short videos that basically say the same thing. Say, look, there are a couple of things. First of all, go set up your social profile and you'll get the books and whatever. But where you start in terms of training, what are you interested in? Right? And of course, you may find something that really jazzes you that you never thought about. I mean, we have a lot of members that are like, I love innocent spouse, cases. They're fascinating, and that wasn't really what they thought about, but I would try to figure out kind of where your interests lies and kind of go there. And you can always expand over to the other things, but start doing what you want to do.

Scott Zarret, CPA

When we started out the presentation. I was asking, you know, what inspires you as a speaker, why you really got into it for me, an observation. Your curiosity, Eric, for just following this path and seeing where it leads, you know, organically, and asking people questions like, what are they interested in? Really having your ear to the ground and pay attention to these war stories and reading between the lines is quite an attribute. And I just want to thank you for being such a wonderful communicator at scale. Right? I mean, really finding the frequency that allows folks to really be able to keep an open mind and hear what you have to say and keeping it fun is really important and light in what could otherwise be viewed as a very intense and maybe intimidating area to work in. But you showed so many thousands of people the path, and I'm just grateful for the role that you play within the profession, not just in our platform, but across the community.

It's really a joy to watch you in action, doing your thing and leading the way. So thank you so much for being here with me and us and anything else that I maybe should have asked.

Eric Green, Esq

I think given what we're seeing with the increased enforcement, increased funding, if you are an accountant looking at this, there's never been a better time to start doing this. I mean, the demand is huge and lawyers aren't doing it, so it's going to be accountants that are going to fill the gap, and there's a huge need. So my thought would be, now is the time to start, if you're interested to start doing this.

Scott Zarret, CPA

Okay, well, why don't we leave it at that? Great. Final thoughts. And with that, we'll close down the session. But again, thank you and I'll talk to you soon.

Eric Green, Esq

Thank you.