What To Do When Your Real Estate Client Has a Tax Problem • Hubert Johnson

Hubert Johnson a Tax Attorney with Guardian Tax Law talks about how he got into tax law and why he decided to stay in this lane. Hubert discusses tax liens and what realtors need to know on this topic. Hubert also talks about property seizure and how important it is to get valid information in order to avoid it. Last, Hubert talks about property protection.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Hubert Johnson can be reached at (520) 526-9850.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
If you’ve been a realtor long enough, you’ll run into the situation where your buyer or seller can’t buy or sell because of a federal tax problem. We’re going to show you what to do in those situations. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we are going to be speaking with tax attorney, Hubert Johnson. Before we get to Hubert, just a couple of quick reminders. If you are new to the show, we appreciate you thanks for tuning in. And the best way that you can help us continue to make more episodes is by two things tell actually three things, maybe three things to do. First, tell a friend I think of one other realtor that could benefit from these sorts of episodes and please share with them also support our sponsors. There are really the reason we can keep paying our staff and continuing to make as many episodes as we do. So please, we love our sponsors. Please love them back check out their products and services. And third, leave us a review on whatever podcast app you may be listening to us on or watching us on. We appreciate it. We read your comments and we make changes to continually improve for you. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Hubert Johnson.

Today on the show, our guest is tax attorney Hubert Johnson from Guardian tax law in Tucson, Arizona. Let me tell you more about Hubert. Now, Huber Johnson has over 14 years of experience as a tax attorney. And in that time, Mr. Johnson taught graduate tax law at Baruch College, lectured to tax professionals in seminars and training across the country and has co written two books on debt tax debt resolution. Mr. Johnson launched Guardian tax law PLLC in November of 2019 and has assisted 1000s of individuals and businesses in dealing with IRS and state tax issues. Hubert has five children he’s married to Katie Johnson. His passion is coaching and officiating youth sports, mostly basketball and soccer, volunteering in his community and for His church. He loves history, sarcasm and helping people pay as little as possible in taxes, please visit his his firm’s website which is Guardian tax law.com. We will have a link to that. In the show notes we’re going to talk about specifically why you’re going to want to reach out to Hubert for either yourself or your clients also follow his follow his YouTube channel which is at Guardian tax law on YouTube, just search for Guardian tax law. We will also have a link to that in the show notes because they have some great content out there to learn Hubert Welcome. Welcome to keeping it real.

Hubert Johnson 4:18
Thank you for having me.

D.J. Paris 4:19
Oh, thank you. We I’m excited to this is a bit of a departure for for us I spend most of my time talking to top realtors. And I love when when when we have a guest opportunity that is a little bit outside of what we normally do, because I think this could really provide some excellent value to our to our listeners, but I’d love to learn a little bit more about you. As you know, we know you’re a tax attorney. So how did you sort of get into tax law? Was that something that you knew from from day one of of law school that you wanted to get into or how did you get there?

Hubert Johnson 4:53
I actually hated loss tax law in law school. I took a federal income tax And I ended up teaching it later. That’s what I ended up teaching. But I didn’t like it. And so my, it’s one of those things I graduated, took the bar and my wife ended up in the hospital for five months, life just went upside down on me. And so I needed a job. And I ended up applying for and working at a tax law firm. And when I first went in, I did the interview, and I was talking to my brother afterwards. And he’s like, he was asking me about, and I said, Well, I’m just helping people who haven’t paid on taxes, etc. I said, Hold the phone. Helping people to pay less in taxes is one of the most patriotic things you can do. And I fell in love with and I’ve done it ever since.

D.J. Paris 5:42
You know, I do I do like that. And I’ve always loved the expression, whatever side of the political spectrum that you fall on. i We are, you know, sort of em, we don’t we don’t have a political slant on the show. Certainly our guests can. Well, but you know, we are agnostic, I guess for politics, but I’ve always loved the expression. Nobody pays $1 more in taxes than they then they want to or that they that they ought to. Right. So nobody does that, regardless of whether you’re the wealthiest Americans or not. I think there’s something to be said that, that we all could, you know, we want to use the tax laws at our disposal to really make sure that we’re minimizing our tax exposure. And

Hubert Johnson 6:24
it’s across the spectrum. It’s all Americans that are impacted by the IRS. I don’t help people avoid taxes or high taxes, because then you go to go, you get to go to a criminal tax attorney, which isn’t me and you do not want to go there. But again, helping people wherever they are. realized and know what their rights and options are is really important. And my office manager makes fun of me. She says I always make people cry. But it’s from unburdening this huge burden that affects people dealing with taxes.

D.J. Paris 6:55
And we should also mention, I mentioned Hubert has taught at Baruch College in New York, I didn’t mention New York, but for those of you that aren’t from the East Coast, maybe aren’t familiar with that university, that is a very, very excellent and top tier university. So this is this is a very, very smart and competent man. And I’m excited that you’re here. Before we get into some of your actual specialties, around tax liens, and what you wish Realtors knew about, you know, the roadblocks or getting over some of those roadblocks they may run into with clients situations. Can we just talk for a moment about how about a realtors own specific tax situation specifically around how they’re compensated? And I know this, this isn’t exactly what you do. But can we just make a plead for our listeners to consider incorporating and actually exploring being paid as a, as a business owner versus just as an independent contractor? Sure, and

Hubert Johnson 7:49
this is pretty much falls into how do I not become or need Guardian tax law. So if you follow this advice, you won’t be in trouble with the IRS. And again, I love giving free advice out that helps people avoid these tax issues in the first place. Because it is amazingly stressful. Issue number one, net corporate get a business structure, some kind of formation if and the main reason for this is it protects your personal assets from any IRS debt, believe it or not, when you have a corporation, and if you incur liabilities under it, and you close it out almost all of the tax that under that corporation goes away with that corporation, that doesn’t mean you can open up one ein after another and just try to avoid it. But if something happens, economy goes bad, you have to close the business down and then reorganize in a different form. You can do that. And we close out business debt all the time, and it protects, it separates the business tax issues from your personal issues.

D.J. Paris 8:50
I have I have a great story or sorry that maybe it’s not a great, it’s actually kind of a sad story. But it’s a story that illustrates this. Just yesterday, I was with somebody that had owned a very successful brokerage, real estate brokerage here in town, he sold it, and the building that he had purchased 20 years ago, while this is more of a Chicago thing, but the taxes for the property taxes for that particular property went from this is not an exaggeration from 30,000 a year to 106,000 a year in one year now. So basically, you know, 300%, or whatever percentage that that would be. And any year he’d already appealed it, it was supposed to be 100. And like 40,000 He got it down to 106. So anyway, he was at a scenario now where to your point, he he’s like I’m just I can’t he was I’m just gonna give the keys to the to the bank at this point because I can’t obviously afford to continue that and because it’s in an LLC or however he has it structured. We’re talking about the same sort of situation.

Hubert Johnson 9:48
Absolutely. And it’s not just text and like you mentioned, yeah.

D.J. Paris 9:50
So yeah, so if if you and by the way, this isn’t really what Hubert’s firm does. But if you would like to incorporate if you are You know, I say for sure if you’re a full time practicing realtor, you really probably ought to, it sort of depends on income level and you’re your CPA should be able to determine when that makes sense for you. But Hubert also knows a lot of CPAs across the country, not only does he know them, he knows the good ones. And, you know, I love my CPA is do I know for sure that she’s one of the good ones? I don’t know. I haven’t gone to jail. So I’m hoping, but, but the truth is, I really I really don’t know. I mean, I love her and I’m probably never gonna leave her unless she screws up badly. And I do really like her but but the truth is, I found her on my own. And I think it’s a better a better way to go is to go through somebody like Hubert who who knows who the at least some of the good players out there. So reach out to him if you are interested in considering that because if you’re being paid just as an independent contractor, there’s a very good chance, again, depending on how much commission you’re earning a year that you could actually save in basically how it could work. The way that I have it structured for me is I am an employee of my own company, my my aunt Well, I’m not a realtor in the traditional sense, but if I were those Commission’s would be paid to my business and then I take a salary. And the Ivan S corporation and the government or the the feds are actually quite lenient about what I have to pay myself based on my overall income. Anyway, so talk to a CPA if you don’t have a good one. Reach out to Hubert he’ll connect you with somebody. But let’s talk about your specialty now, Hubert, so thank you for that. But tell us all about tax liens and what what Realtors need to know. Well,

Hubert Johnson 11:34
just real quick on that. estimated tax payments, if you work for yourself, etc. Business write offs, a good CPA will save you a ton of money if you’re using TurboTax. h&r block, sorry, not to knock them but you need. There are plenty of CPAs that are cheaper than those companies and will do a much better job. As far as my specialty, we work directly with the IRS, we’re on the phone with the IRS and state tax state taxing agencies every day. And one of the big reasons we work with love Realtors so much is that we can help people buy and sell property. And so we have realtors that send people to us say, Look, this guy owes so much, we will set it up in a consignment agreement. And what to help people buy once you get an installment agreement, they still need to qualify based on income to debt ratio. But once that establishment is set up, there are mortgage companies that will still finance a mortgage, as long as it’s in an installment agreement status. Once that’s done, they can purchase the home and then we can go back and renegotiate with the IRS doesn’t mean they’re stuck pick making that payment. So there’s plenty of times that we get them into a home. And then we change gears and do something better for we might wipe out the debt, we might do something else. But getting someone into a home makes some a huge difference for people. And it is so important. So

D.J. Paris 12:59
let’s start with the beginning. So a realtor has a client who would be a perfect a perfect client for somebody for your firm.

Hubert Johnson 13:10
So a perfect climate is someone that knows they have a tax issue and is willing to deal with it. And so they usually run into those issues when they go to refinance, when they go to purchase a property and someone tells them Oh, you have a tax issue, you need to deal with it before you can do A, B or C. So they come in, they want to get this address, they want to move forward, purchase a home, move forward, improve their lives through working with realtors in purchasing real property. And those those are great clients because they’re ready to take care of the issue.

D.J. Paris 13:44
And I remember let’s say 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago there was a boom in the in the what would they call it the not tax reduction business but the debt consolidation business and, and that I see you smiling because that is that that was a very interesting business where there were a lot of non professionals playing in that space. Can you speak a little bit to that just because I know I heard a lot about that even just on news and radio and and all of that and how this is different from that. So

Hubert Johnson 14:18
debt consolidation really is people giving good financial advice helping people pay down their tax debt, you can get a lot of the same information from Dave Ramsey, or other financial professionals online. They’re not using any special licenses or skills to negotiate with the IRS. You have to be licensed with the IRS. You have to been having that experience to go in and do what’s called an offer and compromise a settlement. takes years of experience I’ve had over 300 accepted offers in one year alone. Me personally. And you’ll just the I think it was about a month ago we settled on $49,000 for 20 bucks. Your regular basis, we go as low as $20. If if the shoe fits, if you qualify, it’s an amazing service, we get one or two of those accepted every week. Unbelievable.

D.J. Paris 15:08
This is Yeah. So for those of you that are just going to, you know, a standard debt consolidation company, this is not really what that’s not really what they do, they may call your credit card company and try to negotiate for you or something of that nature, but they’re not going to have the licenses that are necessary to actually communicate with the IRS, with the feds and actually get something. Something done. And yeah, so that’s a fantastic suggestion. What else do should Realtors really understand about sort of the tax liens and, and you know, how you guys can fit in, so

Hubert Johnson 15:43
we can help people sell property, and that’s the other half of it is when they have a tax lien on their property. And they want to sell they can get rid of it. I had someone who interesting story. He was a third owner and a property. We went and dug into the taxes. He knew you owe the IRS, but he didn’t know how the debt was IRS tax that goes away after approximately 10 years. So we found out exactly when he needed to sell. We pursued it and made sure that debt fell off. He sold it he was able to walk away with that money. Wow. Simple.

D.J. Paris 16:21
That’s yeah, that’s incredible. Um, let’s talk about property seizure, because we know that that’s also an important topic that happens Realtors run into that all the time. Let’s talk about how to avoid that. And maybe how a realtor could at least begin to have a conversation with a client in that situation.

Hubert Johnson 16:39
So property seizures is something that I’ve never had an active client had their property seized, because you have to do a lot of things wrong to add property seats. I have had, I’ve stepped into cases where the other attorneys have done everything wrong, where they ended up going to tax court and losing. One guy charged him $25,000 To go to tax court and filed in the wrong venue or place. I still charged him the 25,000. No, that’s horrible.

D.J. Paris 17:09
No, I’m just laughing because of the absurdity of that. Yes, that’s yeah, no,

Hubert Johnson 17:13
but they had their their case was already before the Department of Justice. So here I’m dealing with this in federal court to give you an idea of where I am. And you know that the sale went through because they owed over there was over a million dollar home and they had a second home too. So that’s the very sympathetic situation. But I’ve stopped home cells that were with the DOJ as well. You don’t want to be before the DOJ. You don’t want to go to tax court and 99% of cases, you want someone that will attack that that get rid of it and preserve your assets and your property. There are ways to do that, without making it a 25 $50,000 case. Usually, you can deal directly with the IRS or state and address those issues. So if someone’s telling you, hey, we need you to go to tax court pay me 25 grand for it, get a second opinion. A lot of times if you do owe even if you have assets, equity and assets, you can settle or you can set up some kind of arrangement and just let that clock run or if the tax lien shouldn’t be there in the first place. So we’ve gone in and released tax liens one case where gentleman he partnered up with someone who was an ex con didn’t know it. And he embezzled money he put his name on property shouldn’t have had you’re shaking your head. So again, it was a giant mess. And you know, we went through and fixed it all up with the tax lien department. And one nice thing about the IRS, it’s not known for its efficiency. That’s sarcasm.

D.J. Paris 18:41
No, I’m laughing because I have I had Thankfully I’ve haven’t had any IRS issues. But I did actually just a funny sidebar. I I got a phone call years ago from the IRS and it was a gentleman he said, Oh, I need to you know you there was this one form for my business that I didn’t send in and I’d always heard the IRS will never call you. So if someone’s calling you it’s not the IRS. And I went play sounds like the IRS. He’s just asking for this one form that I don’t know why a scammer would want that. And sure enough, no, he really was with the IRS and he really did need this one particular form and and I faxed it over to him and he was he was actually here locally in Chicago so but most of the time the IRS I don’t think calls but but they do call once in a while or at least they called me and we got it resolved and it wasn’t it wasn’t a big deal. But but you’re right the efficiency of it. I think they were five years late I didn’t even know I owed this particular document and they called me five years after the fact and that’s why I got really nervous because I thought well that this doesn’t sound right. The guy goes everybody thinks I’m not who I am you can look me up I’m really the guy I worked on at the you know building a flatbed building downtown it was it was really more funny than anything but but for the first five times he called me I just deleted the voice and I’m like this is obviously a scam and no it was actually URL, but great point. So, so if if somebody is worried about property seizure, that’s when when they should reach out to you and just sort of get this get see what the options are. Is that Is that fair? Well

Hubert Johnson 20:13
call us right away. Because most situations can be saved and fixed. But what I was gonna say it’s about the efficiency. If you need to sell a property, the IRS actually will jump on it because they’re getting money from the sale of the property. Sure, well, we can within 30 days, we can help with the sale property getting a payoff letter from the IRS or lien subordination, or subrogation, that’s, you know, fancy terms for it, but allow for the seller property, even if the IRS isn’t going to get any money. So there’s a taxing department that is the most responsible department of the IRS, and you can jump on these cases and get it resolved. But as far as seizure, usually, like, everything’s going the wrong way. We’ve saved homes, we’ve saved properties for people heading in that direction. But again, they’re not doing everything wrong. They’ve got bad advice, or they don’t know what to do. And I have a client that I actually had to fire recently, about a year ago, because they were doing everything wrong. They had a rental property, that one they didn’t tell me about. Don’t tell your attorney, which they’re there to represent you that you have attorney client privilege, you can tell them pretty much everything about where your bodies are buried. But so they didn’t tell us about that they tried to hide it from the IRS, the IRS found it because they see most things. They tried to put it in a trust after they knew about the debt, which is a problem. Sorry, hit the wrong button. The trust was invalid anyway. And then they blew off the IRS. Ironically, we got $400,000 to, you know, that went away and expired in their case, and they owed about 800,000. But they still had this property that didn’t didn’t want to disclose. So the IRS went and now the notes on the door and started taking all of their renters payments. So they were moving to seize the property, they sent them notices to appear for summons. So they were being summons. And if you don’t appear to those you can have an A warrant issued for your arrest. So again, doing everything the wrong way. And eventually we terminated with them and said, Look, you’re not listening to us. And you’re going to end up in a criminal case. And so we’re this is the strongest way we can warn you. But listen to your attorney, listen to a good attorney, if you’re not sure, get a second opinion. But you can save most properties I’ve had people call me when I was just coming in to seize accounts, seize property and be able to stop it. As long as it’s not too late. If it’s too late, you might have to contact a bankruptcy attorney which again, they’re worse than we are.

D.J. Paris 22:55
So I’m curious for the majority of your clients who are dealing with a real estate sort of tax situation or tax lien rather on real estate? Is it more often investors who these are invest in best investment assets? Or are they more primary residences, just out of curiosity,

Hubert Johnson 23:16
there’s some investment property, but it usually not an investment group. So it’s usually an individual that has different properties that they’ve invested in rentals. We do a lot where we protect primary residences. The interesting thing about rentals if you’re using it to produce income, you can protect that from the IRS and even do an offer and compromise and wipe out that’s if it’s producing income for you. It’s seen as a mini business. So having rental property that’s actively being used, can really help serve you and we can protect that for you.

D.J. Paris 23:48
Yeah, that’s a really important point. If it’s making money, there’s, there’s that’s a good thing. And of course, that’s what investors are looking for. Is that positive cash flow. Also, I want to talk about property protection. Like, when will the IRS I know like come after a property that’s that’s encumbered or in a business? You know, and how can What do agents need to know about that?

Hubert Johnson 24:16
So I’ve never had someone come to me where I helped them, they listen to me and they actually had property seized. The main reason is, if you do it, right, you produce the documents you work with the IRS. Again, they’ll give you bad information. It’s It’s It’s always fun dealing with them. But when I step in our case, I’ve had plenty of times they told me Look, why are you here, this or that? A month or two later, they’re seeing a completely different tune. Oh my gosh, you’re making my job easy. It’s like Yeah, cuz I don’t want you looking too closely at my client. So we work with them for the benefit of our clients wrap up the case. That’s the main thing you have to work with the IRS. Putting your head in the sand is not a good strategy. And that’s the worst case scenario. I’ve had too many people hire me or others, and then ignore them. And things don’t go well, because the IRS just ratchets up, they’ll ratchet up the pressure until it’s easier time. And if it comes to seizure, you’ve gotten a lot of bad advice, call us, we can jump into it and usually stop it, but have a little horror story if you want to hear it. Love to. So this isn’t real property, but someone that I owned a car lot, who came to us and we were going to charge him seven grand on the spot to start. And I called the IRS spoke to the revenue officer. And he told me, there’s nothing you can do to save this client. They had been trying to get the seizure payment paperwork, process, and they have to send it to their attorneys. And you almost never deal with IRS attorneys. And he had been waiting months for and he told me as soon as that comes back, it could be Monday, it could be a month from now. I’m going in with a fleet of tow trucks. And I’m going to cut open the gates and just haul all of those cars off of his lawn. And I said, Well, that’s lovely. You know what, what do I say? I’m like, Okay, well, thanks for being straight with me. I called the club. Don’t hire us. You need to hire a business bankruptcy attorney right away to save your property. And I asked him, Are those cars even yours? He said, No, they’re on consignment? Oh, do you give that information to the IRS? said well, he asked for it. But I haven’t gotten around to it. So he called the Business Bankruptcy Attorney called me back and said he wants $20,000 I said pay the man. Don’t wait, don’t don’t blow off the IRS. It’s always better to deal with it and get good advice and deal with it head on.

D.J. Paris 26:41
Yeah, you know, it does seem to happen to car some mechanics, or I’ve heard of this happening very, it’s not that uncommon, where the business goes bankrupt, the cars they were working on, or the cars that are on consignment at the time. Get all wrapped into the debt and and it’s my brother in law lost lost a car that way. Anyway, so So yeah, it’s it’s yeah, that makes perfect sense that, that, you know, you’d want to step in pretty pretty seriously at that point and make sure that, you know, doesn’t all go go to pot.

Hubert Johnson 27:17
So success story.

D.J. Paris 27:19
Let’s Yeah, let’s

Hubert Johnson 27:20
hear. So this isn’t dealing with real estate, this gal actually got prosecuted for fraud. So pretty serious case, caught prosecuted by the DOJ owed as close to a million dollars and had quite a few rental properties in Chicago. So we tried to come in and look at it in a holistic manner. She didn’t know what was going on with the rentals, which ones are profitable, which ones weren’t, we lay that off or out for her got a bookkeeper got a CPA, and were able to look at and we actually sold off some of the properties that weren’t profitable, consolidated her holdings, so she was making money off of it got rid of other debt that was just killing her and not helping her. And she was able to turn around and set up an installment agreement and to deal with this and stop all the collection, stop all the seizures, and came out of it with all the properties she still wanted intact. Wow.

D.J. Paris 28:14
And so when you work with somebody who has a million dollar situation like that, and obviously every situation is unique, but what what could that be whittled down to when you when you’re dealing with the IRS? Could it be whittled down to zero? Or is it typically a percentage of it that? How does the IRS typically look at those kind of things.

Hubert Johnson 28:34
So that’s the you’re talking about the offering compromise. So it’s kind of like Cinderella shoe, if your financial situation fits what they’re looking for. It’s an amazing offer, we do it all the time I had. But if your situation doesn’t match, so again, I have an actor. And he’s making a couple million a year and he owes a couple million in taxes. He’s paying it down, he’ll pay it all off eventually. But he doesn’t qualify for an offer and compromise. It just makes too much money. Yeah, the other the gal that I was talking about, she had assets, she had rentals, and she was making well over 100,000 a year at her normal job. She just made too much money didn’t qualify. On the other hand, I just brought someone in, he has a lot of bills, but he’s making 17 grand a month. And he might not qualify for an offer, but we’re gonna put him in a hardship status where he doesn’t have to pay anything to the IRS for at least a couple years. And We’ll reevaluate a situation once it becomes a little more established. And consider those other options. So if you’re making, even if you’re making 10 to $15,000, it’s not automatic that you’re not going to qualify. Get a thorough review. I’ve had people one gentleman had a house. And this is an interesting real estate story. He had been told by a couple other tax attorneys that he didn’t qualify for an offer and compromise couldn’t do it. And then He even went on the IRS website plugged in his numbers. They told him no. He was referred to me by his parents and said, You need to call this guy he called me up. We went through his numbers. And by the numbers, he didn’t qualify, but I said, Hey, let’s make a couple adjustments. He had a 401k with about 14,000. And he ordered $80,000 Simple. Tell me about your house and it was valued by Zillow. We know Zillow valuations are accurate.

D.J. Paris 30:27
It’s usually not but sometimes. Usually, I’m friendly with Zillow. So I’ve tried to toe the line there. But the the listeners know what they think about Zillow.

Hubert Johnson 30:38
Well, he went got a sonar evaluation or appraisal of the property. But this house was built in the 1880s, or 90s. Last updated in World War Two, he was there with living with a couple of kids married with a couple of kids, it had led piping through the house, the roof leaked, I mean, it was it was needed so much work to it, I don’t take the 401k to necessary parents to your home. So you don’t have lead piping in your house, at least fix up the kitchen, the bathroom basic stuff. And I said talk to your wife, see what she thinks she loved the idea. And we because we redid the evaluation, we took the 401k didn’t necessary Paris, which is allowable by the IRS, we were able to settle that for I think it was between six and 7000 wiped up $80,000. And he got to keep this house. Now,

D.J. Paris 31:26
when somebody went when something somebody goes through that particular situation, just out of curiosity, how does that typically affect credit score? Or does it not? How does that, you know, with the IRS, you know, is working on, you know, an agreement that you guys come to settle on? does, how does that affect things like Fico. And

Hubert Johnson 31:48
it greatly improves it, because it shows that this debt has now been settled. Got it, and it doesn’t report it anymore as a negative, that that’s not being paid installment agreements. Again, you still have this tax debt, but it shows that you’re making regular payments on it. So going in and setting up some kind of resolution. Not only helps your credit, but it also stops the IRS from coming after you because that’s the worst thing I get the calls people you know, my bank accounts got it cleared out, I just got hit by a toxin I didn’t even know about that’s, that’s typically what we see is people come to us when the house is on fire. We love it. When people come to us with questions, hey, I might have this issue, or I think I owe but they haven’t come after me yet. Great, we can set it up for you. So they don’t have to worry about the world crashing down. As we deal with this, we can prevent all of that as we go through most cases.

D.J. Paris 32:38
Wow. And we should also mention to another reason to consider anyone who’s having a tax situation over to Hubert’s firm is that a lot of times with some of the creative strategies, they have to, you know, work with the IRS, you know, there is sales of property that happen, certain properties get sold. So, Hubert has to refer business out to realtors from really all over the country because his clients are kind of from everywhere. So can we talk a little bit about how a realtor could connect with you in the event where they have the situation? What would be the, for one of their clients? What’s the best way they should they should reach out

Hubert Johnson 33:17
what call her main line at 520-485-7371, you can contact us through our website. But the best thing is just called we do a free consultation. So I’m a little old school, I feel people should actually have information before they start paying for services, etc. And especially with taxes. People want to know how much I’m going to how much is this going to cost me compared to how much I owe. So we do a free consultation for people put their mind at ease. And we’d like you said, I call people and I use different networking, networking resources to refer business out across the country. I would love to have realtors, we keep a list a contact list of who we can refer business to who do we know and who do we trust?

D.J. Paris 34:02
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a really, really important point. And we should also mention too, that you are you’re located in in Tucson but you’re able to work with, with clients from really all over the US because you’re dealing predominantly with the feds. That’s sort of my understanding. Well,

Hubert Johnson 34:18
we deal with the feds and we deal with most states. There’s only two states that we can work with. And believe it or not, it’s Oregon and Washington.

D.J. Paris 34:28
So if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, find somebody else.

Hubert Johnson 34:31
State taxes that we can’t deal with because they require that you be licensed in the state as a CPA or attorney. But we work everywhere else. Hawaii, Guam, Alaska, New York, New Jersey, Florida. We handle state taxes wherever they have income tax and where they have sales. We deal with sales tax issues, when needed as well. But as far as property, yeah, we refer business and all across the country and we help people All across the country.

D.J. Paris 35:01
I also wanted to I was curious, you’d mentioned that you’re, you’re speaking to the IRS really daily. And obviously, the IRS is a massive employer. There’s, gosh, I don’t know how many employees work at the IRS. But I should have looked that up ahead of time. But it’s a substantial number. And I think the number is increasing, if I remember correctly with the current administration, I think almost, yeah, doubling, right? So is, is, I want to say 100,000 people, maybe I can’t remember the number. But regardless, you are, you’re dealing with with a specific group there? How important is it to work with an attorney? Who does have relationships with some like you? Do you deal a lot with the same people at the IRS over and over? Or is there a reputation that gets built up between attorneys and an IRS for like, oh, you know, for easier, smoother transactions.

Hubert Johnson 35:55
So technically, we can’t legally say that we have special relationships. Yes. But as you work with them, you gain a reputation. Yeah. And I’m not going to say that I have certain IRS agents on a blacklist, that I might just hang up on them when I get them because they’re horrible. But, you know, again, any professional relationship, you develop a reputation. And so we I think we have a really good reputation. But especially when it comes to resolving cases, we know the local revenue officers, but we deal with people all across the country, the number one asset that we bring into it to the table, as we know how to get the things done quickly. We know how to force the IRS to move when they don’t want to move, because they can take years to move on some things. But we know how to maneuver through their bureaucracy, it is You wouldn’t believe they just added about three layers to their bureaucracy in the last couple of years. And one of my associate attorneys was just in here complaining about how ridiculous it is. And when you’re talking to the IRS, we tried to skip the line and go about three to four layers deep into their bureaucracy, the average person calling the IRS they get bad information, they get told the wrong thing all the time. And so when people are trying to help them out, you know, again, one of the key things that I hear all the time is to qualify for a mortgage, you have to have your tax returns filed. The IRS will tell you you have to go back and file 10 years of returns have you heard that? It’s wrong. It’s in their internal revenue manual, their regulations that they can only go back six years. And the only reason to file a return older than three years is to lower a balance that’s already been assessed. So you can’t get a refund more than three years old. And following more than six years, they can’t even demand that you do it. So you’re paying a CPA to do work that’s unnecessary. Ah,

D.J. Paris 37:50
that’s that is interesting, because I always heard that sort of seven year number or whatever that number is. Certainly not. Yeah, that’s very, very interesting. So anyway, for anyone out there who has client with a tax lien or any sort of tax situation, that they are nervous about, that they have a debt that they’re that they owe to the government. This is a great time, you know, to reach out to Hubert because this is going to help get them on the right track path to homeownership and, and just out of their tax situation. So Guardian tax law is the website and Hubert and his team are specialists in tax strategy, especially related to the IRS. So reach out to him, he is looking for great realtors to refer business too, as well. So please consider adding him to your professional network. We are very, very impressed with what Hubert we just to pull back the curtain a little bit. We do get requests almost almost every week from different PR firms that are representing law firms, we almost always pass on those because they don’t seem to always be a good fit for us. But we were really excited to speak with Hubert today. So please consider using him. He works with a lot of a lot of realtors, and he helps your clients. So reach out to him Guardian tax law is where you go also follow him on YouTube at Guardian tax law. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. Hubert I very much appreciate you coming on today and talking have we made tax tax liens fun or at least more fun than they probably are in normal conversation. So I appreciate your your your candor, and I really appreciate you being so generous with this information. I know that you know not all attorneys are so forthcoming with you know, sort of free information. So I really do appreciate that I know our audience does as well. So on behalf of our audience, want to thank you both for coming on our show. And we also want on behalf of Hubert and myself. We want to thank the audience for coming to getting to the end of this episode. I really want to encourage our audience to do two things. Two things that will help out both Hubert and our show. Tell a friend Think of one other realtor that could use this information. Maybe they have a client with a tax situation. And it’s becoming a stopper for them doing any sort of transaction, the perfect reason to reach out to Hubert and his firm. And also, please leave us a review that would help us know what you like and what we can improve on the show and also helps us get in front of more people. So tell a friend and leave a review. We very much would appreciate that. As always. Again, Hubert, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, and we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Robert.

Hubert Johnson 40:32
Thank you, DJ. It’s been my pleasure.