Navigating IRS Nightmares: Tax Solutions, Relief, and Real-Life Wins with Morgan Anderson

Welcome to Don't Retire Graduate, a podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with a purpose and a passion. I'm your host and valedictorian Eric Brotman and this is our sixth season of the show. We'll be bringing you interviews with amazing guests every other Thursday and on alternating weeks we're hosting Diary of a Financial Advisor, which we know you'll all enjoy. So please subscribe and check out our all new content every Thursday. Today I'm pleased to be joined by Morgan Anderson. Morgan is the CEO and founder of Golden Lion Tax Solutions and the author of Tax Debt rule number one, there is always a solution for the last 25 years, Morgan has represented thousands of clients before the IRS and state tax agencies, successfully identifying the best solution given their unique financial situation and then negotiating their acceptance. She's mastered the complex labyrinth of the IRS and state tax systems during her career. While pursuing resolutions for her clients, she's escalated her cases up the various ranks of the irs, even successfully negotiating solutions for her clients with the National Taxpayer Advocate and the Director of the IRS Collection Appeals Division.

Morgan's career has been continuously inspired by the thousands of clients she's helped. She knows that her clients are going through the worst financial situation they will likely ever experience and deserve a compassionate yet relentless advocate to bring their much deserved resolution to fruition. Morgan, welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Well, I'm excited to have you. And you know, talking taxes is not necessarily everyone's favorite thing to do. In fact, when I get an email from my cpa, it feels a little like a letter from the IRS to me because I know that it's going to be an expensive email. Talk a little bit about how you got into this and why you're so passionate about helping folks navigate this. It's messy. It's a nine headed hydraulic.

It is. It really is. I happened into the industry innocently. It was a happy accident. I applied for a job as an administrative assistant and it happened to be with one of the pioneering firms in the tax debt resolution corner of the financial world. And I fell into a world that I love. I get to be a problem solver. I get to help people when they're at the end of their stre.

They just don't know what to do. They have so much anxiety and so much stress and I am able to say, you know what, grab my hand, I'm going to lead the way. And we're going to get you from the stressful situation all the way to a solution. No matter if you owe $30,000 in income tax or if you owe 30 million in unpaid payroll taxes, I've handled it all, and I love it.

That's terrifying to me in every way. Our listeners, by the way, are wildly astute financially because they're our listeners. So of course none of them would ever get into tax trouble with the IRS or anyone else. But I suspect that sometimes this happens in an incredibly innocent, accidental way. Can you talk about maybe the pitfalls, the things that people who think they're doing the right thing might slip into that puts them in a position none of them expected?

I had somebody just recently who has an $80,000 income tax because they had 180,000 inheritance that they received. And instead of getting with their cpa, they went out and built a new barn and put in some new stables for their horses. So it happens innocently. I've had a lot of business owners who have been in business successfully for a long time, and a competitor opens across the street, undercuts their prices, and all of a sudden, they've had 20 employees humming at a very profitable rate for years, and now they're scrambling, trying to figure out how to cover all their expenses because they've lost half of their client base.

This is not one of those where there's comfort in numbers. Do not do it. Penalties will max out at 25% of the unpaid tax. Then they add interest onto the liability. Right now the interest rate is 7%. Last year it was 8%. And the interest rate changes as dictated by Congress per quarter. But we've seen where a simple $10,000 balance owed turns into 14 or 15,000 in a matter of two, two and a half years.

Okay, so for someone who finds himself in this situation and you've, you've all been on the receiving end at some point of a letter about something about, hey, we were questioning this deduction, or there's this, or, you know, I sometimes get a letter from the IRS with a PIN number so I can file. And just getting the letter makes my palm sweat. Even though it's just a pin. Like when you see that in your mailbox, nothing good comes to mind. Right? So when you, when, when folks find themselves in this situation, or maybe it's, maybe it's not sort of the folks listening to the show, maybe it's their parents or their grown kids or, you know, you know, a family member or a friend. If somebody gets in this position, what is step number one?

First thing is do not get action paralysis. So many people, the, their anxiety rises so quick. Typically when they see that return address that says IRS or state of blah, blah, blah, department of Taxation, that they freeze and they turn into ostriches. You know, they bury their head in the sand and think, if I don't look at it, then it's, the problem doesn't exist on some realistic plane. And when that happens and they, they throw the notice in the back of their desk drawer, close the drawer and say, I'm not even going to think about it. This, the situation escalates to a point where the IRS or the state thinks you're not paying attention, which we're not. And that's when they start taking collection action. They can garnish your bank accounts, they can garnish your wages, they can send third party notifications of levies to income sources.

You really want to prevent any of those nasty actions from happening. And it starts with just being proactive. Open the notice, read what it says. Because a lot of times it could be, hey, we received your tax return, we saw that you claimed this, but we're missing some information. Can you send us some more information about this income source or this deduction that you claimed? I had a simple one where a client claimed three dependents and put one one of the Social Security numbers wrong, and because they couldn't match it, they didn't allow the deductions. For having three dependents and it created a tax consequence. Had they just answered that notice with a correction of the Social Security number, it would have prevented a problem.

Sometimes this is simple, sometimes this is not as big a deal as it. But ignoring it is rarely the right. It's kind of like if you talk to a doctor and you ignore that pain in your elbow, it doesn't get better by itself and you wind up with a serious problem or whatever it is right this. Now. Now, in terms of getting help, is the CPA the first choice? If you don't have a cpa, I mean, I know the answer is always to call Morgan Anderson from Golden Lion Tax Solutions. But if, if you don't know Morgan, and you do now, so there's no excuse, but who do you contact? What do. Because I, I don't know that any taxpayer wants to call the IRS themselves. First of all, I think it's about a six hour hold time.

And second of all, you know, I have to think we're in over our heads as consumers, as individuals dealing with a bureaucracy of that magnitude.

Completely agree. Completely agree. First place, if you don't have a cpa, find somebody that you're comfortable speaking with who is an authority in taxes, whether it's me, a local CPA, or somebody who has an EA or CPA credential, because we are the ones who are considered tax experts by the federal and state governments. You can call the irs. I do offer a masterclass for anyone who has a tax liability up to about $25,000 that walks you through exactly how to handle a tax liability up to 25,000. Beyond that point, the level of aggression increases tenfold, hundredfold. So you really want somebody involved who knows the rules of the proverbial game. Right? You want somebody who is 100% invested in that world, who knows all the ins and outs of every move and pivot you can take as you seek a solution to the problem.

So that would be my recommendation. Call your local cpa. Call me. I'm happy to point people in a good direction if we're not a good fit. But it's not one of those situations that you want to DIY if your liability is more than $25,000.

So I sometimes think of the tax resolution. I worry that some of them are fraud. You know, we think about credit counseling services and some of them are legitimate and they're, you know, they can be extremely helpful and some of them are really predatory. How can a consumer know the difference if they're, if they're looking for tax resolution. How do they know the difference between one that is legitimate and maybe one that's less so? That might in fact compound their problem.

Boy, that is a really good point to bring up. Just like attorneys, there's really good attorneys and there are some that are just predatory ambulance chasers. Right. There are some that are on the up and up and some who try to be everything to everybody and they don't specialize in one area and they end up causing more problems than the savings by going with somebody who's more budget friendly. The best way to figure it out is to get on the phone and speak with them. Do they sound salesy? Do they sound like they're just trying to get you to send them a check? If that's the case, they're probably not going to be one of those who will be personally or have a team member be personally invested in you, your unique situation and your unique tax problem. A lot of the offer and compromise mills the IRS has actually shut down. I don't know if you remember the commercials for J.K.

harris or Ronnie Deutsch. They were running them on Fox and ESPN and CNN. Yeah.

Late at night, 3:00 clock in the morning.

Yeah, they all.

Not that I was up at 3 o' clock in the morning, of course.

Oh no.

Never coming home where I would never. No, but, but you're right, there was. So, so you know that, that whole mill concept of now you dial an 800 number and you're into this machine. So, so let's use me as an example because I, I'm perfectly happy to do this and delighted that I don't have a tax lien and don't have this problem. But if I did, for whatever reason there was something that got missed and I call you. What is the. What is the process? What is the. What is how does this work and maybe how is it.

How are you similar to other organizations that do good work in this area and maybe what differentiates you? That's like a seven part question.

Yeah, it is a seven part question.

Can you along the way. Yeah, no, that is podcast host 101. Not to ask a seven point question. So now it's your problem.

It's okay, thanks. I'll take the baton. Not a problem.

There you go.

So when I created Golden Lion Tax Solutions, I'd been in the industry for 22 years already and I worked with that, that one firm that I was first hired with and then they changed hands and they changed the way that they handled client cases. And it didn't feel right to me because I've always been the person who didn't just see a case as a file on my desk. It was a person I got to know. My clients intimate family details, you know, what they did on the weekends, their favorite football teams. And that was just a byproduct of the relationship that we forged while we worked together. If you're not comfortable with the person you're working with, you're always going to wonder, are they really fulfilling what I'm paying them to do? Right. You have this internal dialogue, this internal voice saying, okay, they told me that they were going to call the IRS on Monday, and it's now Thursday, and I haven't heard anything. What is going on? We.

When I find. Founded golden lion, we have this firm commitment to our clients. If you call us, we return your call within one business day. If we say we're going to call the IRS on Monday and we're going to give you an update thereafter, you better believe by the end of business on Monday, you're going to have an update date. So I'm sorry I kind of went on a little rampage this way. But that, that personal responsibility that I feel to our clients is the guiding compass point of what my company does and the policies and procedures that we employ on a daily basis. These clients are coming to us in a very vulnerable position. They owe tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars to these big federal and state bureaucracies that they can't get answers from, that they're just getting threats from, and they're scared.

They're stressed out and scared. So my guiding point for the way we handle clients is you're going to put all the stress and anxiety on us. We're going to lead the way. We're going to be 100% transparent with you. With every step we take, every time we come to a crossroads, we're going to sit down and talk about the pros and cons of each option. We're going to educate you about everything that's going on and say, okay, we would recommend we head down path A. Do you have any other questions? But this is why we think this is the best option for you. And our clients have come back and reported to us just within a few days of working with us, they say, oh, my gosh, I can sleep at night again.

I'm not as stressed as I was because I know you're taking care of this and you're guiding me along the way. You're keeping me fully engaged with everything that's going on, I don't have to worry. So when a client comes to us, we start with an investigation and we always investigate everything before we say, okay, this is the resolution path that we're going to move forward with because it's in your best interest. We call the tax agencies, we pull all the data from them, we ask for a collection threat, hold on the case so we have some breathing room. We go through the client's financial condition with them so we know the way the IRS and the states will look at them and what their expectation to solve the debt would be based on the client's financial condition. Because their financial condition is what dictates the resolution options that can be put in place. And the reason that is is because you could owe $10 million to the IRS. But if you don't have a means to pay it back, they know they can't get blood from a turnip.

So. Yeah, so, so let's talk about what some of those resolution paths might look like. Because I, I, I assume, and you know what happens when you assume, but I assume that one of them is, is working out some form of payment plan over some period of time. One of them might be negotiating down the amount in order to stroke a check for, in full for whatever the negotiated amount is. What am I missing? What are the other, what are the, those types of things and am I barking up the right tree?

You're barking up the right tree and you're getting ready to nab the mailman on the rear end.

Whoa.

How about that one?

This is a family show.

I'm sorry. I apologize to all the youngins listening.

There you go. They're all interested in tax liens. There's lots of teenagers really, really passionate about tax liens. So I don't think we have to worry that much.

But so what are those high school teachers playing?

Maybe. So, so what are those, what are those resolutions? What, what are those, what are the, the various choices in the, in the. Pick your own adventure. What, what are those, what do those look like in general?

Have the penalties been maxed out at 25% per each liability? What is the current interest rate? We look at leveraging money because sometimes if you're setting up an installment agreement, and I'm going to really geek out on you here, when you're setting up an installment agreement and you start making payments under those terms, the IRS automatically applies the payments to the oldest debt on record. Okay, well, sometimes you don't want to go there because maybe you have $15,000. The penalties on the most recent year haven't maxed out yet. But if you can put that 15,000 there before you set up the installment agreement, you're leveraging your money in a very smart way. So there's different ways we approach installment agreements, but there's also asking for penalties to be removed. If you have a good reason why the liability accrued, they'll consider taking the penalties off. There's offers in compromise. There is ways to subordinate a tax lien on your property so you can secure a loan to pay towards the debt.

There's, it's like Baskin Robbins, 31 flavors. Right?

So there's lots, there's lots of ways, potentially there's lots of ways to do this. Now it's interesting, that reminds me of the way credit card companies handle when, when people get suckered into the, you know, 3% forever, but then they continue to use their card and all their payments go toward the 3%, not the 18% and it actually dramatically increases or, you know, and situations like that where it's very tricky and it's, it's in the agreement somewhere, but it' tricky. So the IRS and the state governments do that. I assume they do the oldest ones first because of the 10 year clock. They want to make sure they get paid.

Correct.

So that's, I'm sure what their rationale is. So installment payments are an option. Collateralization is an option.

Settling the debt.

Okay, Settling. So settling and just paying for less than, than the full amount and, and having it go away.

Correct.

Share with me a couple of wins and losses, obviously without protect the innocent here. I don't want you to accidentally, you know, share anything personal about anyone, but I'm sure you've had situations where there's been an extraordinarily terrific outcome and I'm sure there have been some where an agency wouldn't budge or the outcome really didn't go well. Can you sort of describe what those scenarios look like without going into specifics?

Sure, sure. Really simple win to share. I had a realtor on the east coast. He had, you know, being self employed, he didn't fully understand estimated tax payments, didn't file for a few years. By the time he filed, it was just about $190,000, including penalties and interest that he owed the federal government. And his financial condition was really poor. You know, the housing market has been such a challenge for realtors last two, three years that his income was significantly less than it had been in, in prior years. And he didn't have any assets really to speak of.

He had a vehicle, rented his apartment and that was it. So we ended up submitting an offer and compromise request and it took nine months to get through it, but we ended up settling that debt that was now over $200,000 for $4,800.

Oh my goodness. So I shouldn't pay my taxes because I'm going to get off the hook later for a small. No, that's not true. All right, I'll keep paying them. Yeah, no, but that's a good outcome. That's a very good outcome.

But this is a good outcome. But again, it was dictated with his financial condition.

Right.

That's always going to be the driving point. No matter how much you owe, your financial condition dictates the options available. Now, I've had situations where we've gone through an offering compromise. And one of the terms for an offer in compromise is you say mea culpa, irs. I'm so sorry that I didn't file and pay for all these years. My financial condition shows that I cannot afford to pay this debt back. But I know that I have to be good moving forward. I have to pay my taxes moving forward.

I have to file on time moving forward. Right. I had a couple who were both self employed and we didn't offer in compromise. They owed about $400,000. We had whittled it down to 32,000 would be the settlement figure. And they wouldn't stay on top of their estimated tax payments. The offer kept getting threatened to default. The offer specialist I was working with, we danced in front of her for like four months.

Just please don't default it. I promise we're going to make a tax payment. I'd get to them, say, you got to make this tax payment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they ended up blowing up the offer and compromise negotiations that we had worked on for over a year.

Wow.

Because they stopped making their. Their tax payments. So.

So, so a lot of this comes down to. To behavior. A lot of it comes down to honoring your end of the deal, which seems like any deal would be. Would be that way.

Absolutely.

This. This has to be a very emotionally taxing thing for people. No pun intended. And I would think that. I would think that you're not a therapist. As a financial advisor, I'm also not a therapist. How do you deal with what I imagine is extremely emotional, scared people?

We. We are therapists at a. At a. To a certain degree. You know, when. When we do this work and we're saying, okay, you have. You're coming to me with this problem, and I understand that there's emotions. You're a human being, so you're going to have emotions and you're going to be scared and you're going to be stressed out.

I have ended up with a therapist hat and jacket on with almost every single client. And part of it is because they feel very alone. They feel extremely alone when they're facing this issue. And part of my message to them is, you may feel alone, but. But you're not. I'm here. But let me tell you, there's millions of other people who also have this problem. So not to excuse it, not to say it's not something you need to handle, but you're not alone in this because there are millions of tax liens out there with individuals and businesses who owe the IRS in states.

So don't beat yourself up. Right. Okay.

I'm.

I'm drawing a line in the sand for you right now. You are going to be proactive moving forward. You are going to get to the other side of this. If you have worries, concerns, dump them on me. I'm fine with it. But I'm here to tell you, don't give this debt more power than it deserves. Don't let it ruin your life. Don't let it ruin your health, ruin your sleep.

It's just not worth it. It's a debt you need to address. You've reached out. We're handling it now. I'm giving you permission to start feeling better and moving on.

I love that. And, and you're. You're not only. You're not only giving folks significant peace of mind, I would think, but also being an accountability partner and saying, you know, you said you would do these three things. You need to do these three things, whatever they are, that. That's a. That's an important role to play. How Many folks.

How many folks are working with you? Do you. Is it. Is it you? Is there a big team?

Yeah, I have. I have. Right now, I've got about seven people who work for me. I contract with a few people as needed. We have about 160 clients that are active right now. We see those numbers go up, we see them go down. But we try to assign cases to my staff in a limited capacity because I want my staff to be personally invested with every client they work with. I want them to remember, okay, the client's got a big deadline coming up next Friday.

I want to be on the phone with them talking about everything else. We still need to meet that deadline. What are your questions? You have a tax deposit coming up on the 15th of next month. What's our game plan to make sure that that gets paid? We really do jump in with both feet. And we work with our clients, CPAs and bookkeepers, because we don't do tax returns. We stick to our area of specialty. We're kind of brought in as a team member on the bench to handle this one issue. We collaborate with everybody.

We get it resolved, and then we back out.

So you work with the CPAs or other tax professionals, maybe financial advisors, maybe attorneys and other folks who are part of this team to get this done.

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and talk about a good feeling for a client who has this problem. Right. They see us working with their CPA or with their attorney. We've had a lot of divorce situations where we've had to mediate between the two sides to identify the problem and the best solution.

But when I imagine divorce. I'm sorry, I imagine divorce and also medical. Medical debt can lead to this a lot of times, too. Yeah. So I'm curious about something and just a broad brush. You have 160 current. Current clients in the pipeline. Do more than half or less than half have CPAs and financial advisors? I'm curious whether 150 of the 160 folks are without financial and tax advisors, and therefore, there's some kind of anecdotal evidence that having advisors can keep you out of this or whether that's not true.

Is there any scientific data to suggest that people with advisors are less likely to wind up in this situation?

From my experience, it happens across the board.

Okay.

And a lot of times, it goes down to the relationship they have with their CPAs. I would say 85% of our clients and have CPAs, financial advisors. The problem is, if you come to your CPA once a year with a shoebox full of receipts and say, here you go. Let me know how the tax return comes together. You're not giving that financial advisor or CPA the opportunity to guide you throughout the year to implement better tax strategies. They're not helping. You're not having them help you prepare and address your taxes and your financial condition throughout the year. So then you end up with a tax return on April 10th with a balance out of 25,000.

And then the client is upset at the CPA and says, isn't there something you can do? Are there more expenses we can claim? And they'll say, yep, but you're talking about a historical event at this point. You're talking about what happened last year and the choices you made last year. A lot of the clients who come to us had worked with a different CPA previously, and their current CPA says, I know a specialist that I want to connect you with to deal with these problems from before you had me engaged. And I always, if there's one thing that I preach to everybody I know, my friends get tired of hearing it. Work with your CPA or your ea, whoever your trusted advisor is, at least once a quarter. If you have something big happening in your life, let's say a parent is ill and you're going to be inheriting assets or money, get with them and say, hey, my. My parents are passing away. They have a home.

They have investments that come to me. They're. Todd, what do we do? How do we best prepare? By reaching out to your professional. They're going to be able to employ all of their education and all of their experience to benefit you. So a lot of people don't think about their financial advisor that way. Hopefully your listeners do. They're here because they're interested in their finances, right?

Yeah. No, I would hope so. I mean, we certainly. I. I meet with my CPA more than once a year. I don't just send a pile of stuff. We do have dialogue. We do plan, both at the business level and at the personal level to see what are the things that we can do to make this year better while it's still this current year.

And also what should I be prepared for? You know, if. If I'm going to wind up owing money, I want to make sure I set some aside. And typically that's the case. But give me an estimate, give me a ballpark so I know what to do. Morgan, we're almost out of time. I wish we weren't, because I would talk to you all day. Even though the topic is Taxes. I have lots of opinions on taxes, and some of them start to sway politically and otherwise.

So I'm not allowed to share them on a podcast. I would never. And I won't put you on the spot in that regard, but I am going to ask you a fundamental question you can't get out of. You can't get on this show and then have the show end without answering it. And that is, what do you want to be with when you grow up?

Okay, I'm going to give you a broad stroke answer.

Go for it.

Financially, abundant, happy and healthy. I know that sounds so cheesy and general, but, boy, you know, having abundance in your life. Money isn't the answer to everything, but it sure makes everything so much easier to deal with.

Some things.

Yeah, happiness, you know, I mean, you can't get better than that. If I have those three things, man, I am living on Cloud nine, so.

I have thoroughly enjoyed that. Where can folks who are interested in learning more about you get in touch with you? What's the best way to reach you or the best resources?

Yeah, our website, Golden Lion Tax Solutions. You can look me up on LinkedIn, Facebook. We're all over social media. My direct contact information is on the website. Feel free to reach out to me. I. I'm here to answer any tax concern questions. Grab my book.

Thank you so much for putting that up there. That's on Amazon. You know, look me up and, and reach out to me. There is never, in the tax world, there's never a question that is too small or a question that you should feel embarrassed to ask because you have to advocate for yourself.

Well, I love that and I think offline, we need to work out a book swap because I want to read about the number one, the number one rule, if you can make that happen. And I want a signed copy because this could be really valuable someday and I might need collateral. Who knows? Morgan, thanks for being on the show. This was great.

Thanks so much for having me. I love chatting about this. I know it's such a dry topic.

But we did well. Hopefully we were. Hopefully, yes, hopefully we were entertaining while we were educating. That's. That's always the goal. So thank you. I'd like to thank everyone for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, be sure to share it with friends and family so they can join you on your journey to financial freedom.

And please leave a review or rating on your favorite podcast platform. Those are priceless to us. We'll be back next week with another entry in our diary. Of a financial advisor. And in two weeks we'll with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Broughton, reminding you don't retire. Graduate securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, llc. Kestra is member finra, sipc.

Investment Advisory Services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, llc. Kestra as an affiliate of Kestra is. Kestra is or Kestra as are not affiliated with Brotman Financial or any other entity discussed.