Complaint Review: Tax Relief Associates

These are the facts: I worked for TRA as an employee for approximately one year and left my position there on or about September 17, 2004 to work for another tax relief company closer to my home. My only position with the company was as an employee of TRA (an in-house attorney). I never entered into any written agreement with any individual client of TRA and never took any fees from any client of TRA. TRA represented clients before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS or Service) and/or various state tax agencies. Nearly all business was conducted by telephone. As an employee of TRA, I was responsible for negotiating settlements or resolutions with the IRS or state on behalf of clients who had tax issues before these agencies.

When I left TRA, the company was in good standing with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). They had an A Rating and from my experience there, I thought they were a reputable company. From what I understand, TRA's rating with the BBB fell to an F Rating some months after I had left the company. I do not know what transpired at the company which resulted in the company's sudden fall in the BBB ratings. I also understand that sometime in June, 2005, TRA suddenly closed their doors and has since filed for bankruptcy.

I don't ever recall representing someone name Tammy from Cloverdale, OR. It is possible that my name could have initially been on the Power of Attorney (POA) for this client but that does not mean I ever had anything to do with her case. In fact, given the fact that she was a client when TRA closed its doors, I had been long gone from the company at that time.

The POA process at TRA worked as follows. When clients signed service agreements with TRA, their case was assigned to either an attorney or an enrolled agent (EA) all of whom were employees of the company. TRA then sent each client a blank Power of Attorney (POA) to sign and send back to TRA. TRA attorneys or EAs would then sign and date the POA before it was faxed into the IRS. There were generally three TRA employees listed as representatives on all POAs but only one representative would be assigned primary responsibility for handling the case. If the assigned attorney or EA was absent, one of the other employees listed on the POA would then be available to handle any urgent issues which arose. Since TRA served hundreds of clients and my case load was consistently well in excess of a hundred cases, unless I was assigned primary responsibility for a case I seldom knew anything about other cases in the office.

After I resigned in September, 2004, I did not take any of TRA's clients with me. I specifically instructed TRA to revoke all my POAs on file with the company so I would not continue to receive TRA client mail from the IRS. In order to revoke a POA, all representatives listed on the POA must sign the revocation and the revocation must also list the name and social security number of the client. When I resigned from TRA, I did not have possession of any of the case files, any of the POAs or any list of client names and their social security numbers. Therefore, I had to rely on TRA to revoke all POAs for me.

Again, I had nothing to do with this client during my one year tenure at TRA.