Ben Golden, EA Platinum Mastermind Member Spotlight
Two years ago, owner Ben Golden’s practice, Golden Tax Relief LLC, was bringing in about $12,000 a month from tax resolution clients. Fast forward, Ben now employs 19 teammembers in seven states, and the company’s monthly gross is nearly $200,000. Ben shares his secret weapon and says, “Anywhere you look inside my company, you’ll see derivatives of Michael Rozbruch’s system. The way I run my business is primarily based off of the Tax Resolution Domination System and Toolkit (TRDST).” If that weren’t endorsement enough, Ben is quick to add that he purchased the TRDST and studied it before opening his tax resolution business five years ago. Growing up on a farm in Thomasville, Alabama, Ben learned the value of hard work and perseverance. After high school, he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Along the way, he married Amanda, who was in the Air Force, and her posting took them to San Francisco. While there, he earned a master’s degree in taxation and went to work for a regional accounting firm. Wanting to spend more time with his parents, Ben returned to Thomasville and purchased an accounting firm there. He purchased a second accounting firm in Florida, where he lived for 10 years. He eventually sold the Florida firm and closed the Alabama company so he could help his dad with his railroad construction company. Ben bought his father’s company, but accounting called him back. “I wanted to go back into the accounting world, but I didn’t want to do tax return preparation,” Ben explains. “That’s when I found Michael’s program.”
Tax resolution struck a chord for Ben because he experienced how relentless the IRS can be. “After I purchased my first accounting firm, one of my clients got into trouble, and he owed the IRS $171,000,” Ben recalls. “The IRS agent said, ‘Ben, you’re going to have to pay your client’s debt.’ She went on to tell me exactly how much money I had in my bank accounts, what my house was worth, how much was left on the mortgage, and how many vehicles I owned and their value. Then she said, ‘If you sold everything, you could pay the $171,000.’” agent made a mistake. “I called the IRS agent and said, ‘I need your manager’s number.’Then I called the manager’s number and said, ‘I need to talk to the territory manager.’The revenue officer had acted improperly,”Ben explains. “She stole my identity and researched me when she didn’t have the authority to do it. She was given 30 days off Ben spent a sleepless night going over the case and figured out the without pay, and she was told she could never work another one of my cases.” Ben also had his tax identity stolen when someone filed a fakeW-2 and tried to get a refund of $90,000. “It took me several years to fix that tax problem,” Ben says, “And I’m an expert! How is a layperson going to be able to do it?” Living in a small town, Ben knew he would need to run his practice and hire employees remotely. “Thomasville is very rural, so my ideal client is not around me,”Ben says. “I had to come up with a different approach, and I learned through Michael’s program that 85% of CPAs and enrolled agents do not want to deal with the IRS. So, I built my company on referrals from other CPAs.”
One such referral led Ben to a case where the state of Florida audited a company and said it owed $278,000 in sales tax. The client signed the audit, the state levied $50,000, and the taxpayer signed an agreement to pay $1,000 a month. Ben’s referral partner thought the client didn’t owe the sales tax but didn’t know how to help him, so Ben stepped in. “I pushed what I call the nuclear button,” Ben says. “I wrote a very specific letter to the CFO of the state of Florida. Long story short, the CFO contacted the State Department of Revenue and required the auditor to reopen the case. With our help, the $278,000 vanished, and the client was refunded the $50,000 that had been levied.” Ben enjoys spending his free time with Amanda, their children — Daniel (18) and Kaylie (16) — and their menagerie of pets: a cat, a bearded dragon lizard, and two miniature schnauzers. The Goldens also enjoy church activities, and Ben is a target shooting enthusiast. “God, guns, and country,” he says with a laugh.
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